Thursday, January 9, 2014

Five Appalling Lies You Should Swallow, about Cutting Social Security? You Decide.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)












Please get involved in this issue. This cannot stand.

Five Appalling Lies You Should Swallow, about Cutting Social Security?

Five Outright Lies Are Being Spread About Social Security - to promote significant cutbacks in eldercare and unemployment benefits.

These people are not just wrong, they're misguided to the point of being deranged, and are half way to destroying their country. This is no longer just Innocent Fraud due to ignorance, it's bordering on willful treason and sedition.

They must be stopped. Please consider forwarding the following links, and posting them at the website linked to above.

ps: Maya MacGuiness, director of CRFB reportedly receives a salary of $360,000 per year to work on reducing YOUR Social Security benefits. She's funded by billionaire Peter G. Peterson, who's been obsessed for decades with disenfranchising the Middle Class.

*** 

[I posted this comment at the CRFB website. Let's see if it survives their "moderator."]

Ed Lorenzen and the CRFB are starting from a false premise. They flat out miss a simple but critical point.

"Data is irrelevant without [full] context." Walter Shewhart

First: FICA taxes for elder & unemployment benefits aren't necessary for any other policy, or for Corporate Welfare. So they aren't for SocSec either. Just another regressive policy, reflecting 80 years of cruel, class warfare.
“I guess you’re right on the economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren't a matter of economics, THEY'RE STRAIGHT POLITICS. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Second: No fiat currency issuer ever has to balance "fiat." If the population (and/or economy) is growing, we have to rightsize non-zero inflation, just to maintain adequate liquidity for growing numbers of people & more transactions/year.
We Need a Bigger Budget "Deficit" - William Vickrey, Nobel Prize
&
Fifteen Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism (see fallacy #6)

Third: Taxes are Irrelevant for ANY amount of fiat, no matter the policy.

Fourth:
 "Almost everybody talks about budget deficits. Almost everybody seems in principle to be against them. And almost no one, literally, knows what [they are] talking about." Robert Eisner, The Misunderstood Economy, p.90;


Fifth: Lorenzen and CRFB are completely out of paradigm when it comes to the very operations they are trying to discuss.
"Save Social Security From Its Saviors" - Robert Eisner

***

Sadly, Lorenzen, MacGuiness & Peterson think we're still on the gold standard. That paradigm hasn't existed since 1933. We've come a long way since then. We can't go back, without destroying the USA.



20 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are bogus issues concerning Social Security and real issues concerning Social Security. None of the real issues have anything to do with the fiat monetary system.

Roger Erickson said...

Dan, Please tell Pete Peterson, Maya MacGuiness & Ed Lorenzen that.

At least 12 times. It's not sinking in.

Or else they're income depends on NOT understanding.

Matt Franko said...

Dan

this from Rubin (Third Way) in the Thoma post downthread:

"Fiscal discipline could provide room for reasonable stimulus to create jobs. The partially cancelled sequestration should be fully rescinded to eliminate its fiscal drag. Fiscal funding should come largely from revenue increases..."

Do you see a difference in this language?

Like Rubin is advocating raising taxes on the top end of incomes (like raising the cap on FICA wages) but "using" those revenues to increase spending at the same time? (which may actually work imo... ie increased spending AND taxing as long as the leading spending is increased...)

Or nothing new to see here?

rsp,

Ryan Harris said...

The Fed, Social Security Administration, and Congressional Budget office produce projections that are portrayed as impartial, unlike the CRFB.
The government's own reports usually contain the language about the programs un-sustainability, the danger of long term deficits and need for reform. When our own staff economists are the experts, that we pay to be the wonks, the specialists and to understand, yet they generally agree with the CRFB, the CRFB isn't lying, they are working to fix a broken system.
The law makers and public aren't the experts and are paying damn good money to the economists to provide accurate information and are responding to the warning raised by economists. Until the impartial, mostly Ivy League economists that rule the government change their tunes, it would be irrational to expect concerned citizens and politicians to stop funding and working to do what they are told is in the best interest of the public. I reckon even Peterson and the Koch's believe the economics of austerity best serve the future of the country.

Tom Hickey said...

Rubin got Clinton to run a surplus by raising taxes to increase confidence in sound money. Now he is saying that more spending is called for, but it must be paid for. The GOP says it should be paid for with other spending cuts (a wash really), and the Third Way, which most progressive Dems buy into, says instead to raise taxes on the top income brackets. The Third Way policy would be better than the GOP since it increases spending and creates increased flow, but neither of them are as sound in real terms as the Post Keynesian = MMT solution that is ver close to that Keynes proposed to FDR and which FDR followed only partially. See the Counterpunch article by Nasser. Rubin's solution is much closer to what FDR did when he aborted the nascent recovery.

system failure due to insufficient evolution? said...

The tactics of downgrading and degeneration

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2013/12/the-tactics-of-downgrading-and.html

Ryan Harris said...

Food stamps have been cut too, by 9 or 10 billion Go Demo-Repubs!

googleheim said...

No one talks about the competition in the world.

OPEC hoarding U$D, as well as Chinese, Japanese, UK-knees, Europe and so on.

No one figures in a dashboard approach with instrument panel to be read and populated :

Mosler and his graphs
Franko and the flows
Norman and invariants
Hickey and the twists

Someone needs to make a simple dashboard GUI which is fed by the data -

tax receipts
dollar injection
bond buying
whatever - spending in different categories

googleheim said...

All on one page

Matt Franko said...

goog,

Not even the Treasury dept has such a 'dashboard'... they imo actually DO NOT follow how much they are actually spending...

I've looked into this and talked to Treasury people about this but they told me they "don't have the money" to integrate the disparate accounting systems within the different Depts....

So "morons" wins again...

rsp,

Matt Franko said...

Tom,

Ive been looking at SS enrollment rates lately, looks like an 8M add over the last 23 months...

Or 347k per month... this is for both disability and retirements...

This is up substantially since last I looked at it a couple of years ago...

Boomers lead edge turned 65 in 2011...

So this phenom is going to start to accelerate up the leading edge of the boomers population bell curve...

SS is going "cash flow negative" in moron terms as we speak... and Medicare always was "cash flow negative" to put this in terms morons can understand...

Here is a link to a latest SS "trustee report":

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM/index.html

"Neither Medicare nor Social Security can sustain projected long-run programs in full under currently scheduled financing, and legislative changes are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers. If lawmakers take action sooner rather than later, more options and more time will be available to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare. Earlier action will also help elected officials minimize adverse impacts on vulnerable populations, including lower-income workers and people already dependent on program benefits."

So we may start to see these people start to become more desperate as this trend continues and the programs continuously operate "in the red" again to put this in terms morons can understand...

These VSPs may start to become ever more erratic/irrational/unpredictable as this goes on if not addressed...

They may start to "lose their minds" and become even more dangerous/desperate.... no telling what they are capable of...

rsp,

Ryan Harris said...

This is where the insanity in government and politics begins. These are the roots of the problem. In their attempt to be impartial, they sound ominous and scary. Politicians and citizens do ominous and scary end time predictions very well and dutifully. Their collective imaginations have been well versed in foregoing pleasures now to experience great things later.

Matt Franko said...

Right Ryan I do a lot of reading on the "right side" of things and there is always that strong "doomsday" type of context over there...

So to them it is like they are doing "God's work" to prevent what they see as a human catastrophe or "armageddeon" or whatever... meanwhile they are so stupid that they are actually advocating CREATING one.

Would actually be comical if they were not in positions of authority all over the place...

rsp,

Roger Erickson said...

There is much Treasury activity which the MICC - esp the security state - cannot reveal.

At least not if they want to operate via business as usual.

googleheim said...

Matt

I meant that this blog needs to make a make shift version.

I bet Mosler already has one in his hideout in the BatCave ... or is that the FiatCave ...

googleheim said...

i.e. the "Dashboard"

Matt Franko said...

Working on it goog.... govt data format is not consistent and makes it harder to "scrape" off of the files...

rsp,

googleheim said...

MATT

Consider making it on your own blog page so we can tie it in
from time to time but also
just make it a stand-alone blog dashboard with full on cockpit
like a jet airplane.

then we'll java in telemetry from various flows in/out, tax receipts, solar flare eruptions, and more ...

Ryan Harris said...

Nice Idea, Goog

Ryan Harris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.