The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    CPI Unchained Open Thread

    By Michael Maiello on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 10:49am | Politics

    I've written about the Chained CPI here at Dag, oh... a lot of times.  I also wrote about it when I had my column for The Daily and, as I've done a lot of research, I consider myself an informed Chained CPI dissenter as a matter of political and economic fairness.  In short, I believe that its use of "the substitution effect," where consumers respond to the rising prices of some goods by buying others, can be used to mask changes in standards of living.

    Quickly, I'll use consumer electronics as an example.  A new type of TV comes out and it is the best, top of the line thing.  Kanye raps about owning one.  It's expensive.  If you want to be a first buyer, you have to pay up.  I buy last year's model, which is now cheaper.  Over the next year, the new TV is no longer the newest best thing out there.  Its price drops.  I can afford it.  Here's the thing -- I am no longer buying the top of the line.  Kanye is rapping about something better.  The price drop helps me, but me buying the TV discounted, months after it comes out, does not mean I have Kanye's standard of living.

    My point?  People should retire like Kanye.  Also, Barack Obama reportedly supports tying Social Security benefits to the Chained CPI.  Discuss!

     

    Topics: 
    Politics

    Comments

    At the risk of plagiarizing myself:

    Unchained CPI Melody

    Oh, my Prez
    my Congress
    I’ve hungered for a steak
    a long lonely time
    my cash goes out so quickly
    the Fed can’t do too much
    are you still mine?
    I eat some soy
    It tastes like soy
    Please send real food to me

    Worker’s paychecks flow overseas,
    overseas
    into waiting arms overseas
    our big bosses say ‘right to work, right to work’
    we’ll bring your jobs home on the cheap

    Oh, my Prez
    my Congress
    I’ve hungered for a steak
    a long lonely time
    my cash goes out so quickly
    the Fed can’t do so much
    are you still mine?
    I eat some fish
    I’m not sure which
    Please send real food to me


    by Donal on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 11:05am

    If Obama is for chained CPI, then it's DOA in the House. They want the government to turn over SS and Medicare to Wall Street.


    by NCD on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 2:36pm

    In a weird way, Chained CPI does turn over SS to Wall Street.  Retirees will have to make up the difference somehow. 401k and IRA contributions might be the only way, as well as buying riskier annuities once retired.


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 4:18pm

    Even if workers have the extra money to add on to their 401K, chained CPI may cut SS only 0.3% a year.

    With a generous management fee of 3%, the management compensation on a 0.3%/year IRA add on investment is 0.0003%. Over ten years, a mere 0.003% for financiers to pocket. One thousand times less than a 3% fee on the whole kit and caboodle in the 'privatize/profitize' it GOP plan.

    The GOP wants The Street to get it all, expecting, of course, that a sizable amount of the fees, charges, profits from the steady stream of SS cash headed to Wall Street will be kicked back to the Republican Party.


    by NCD on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 8:49pm

    Here is the deal, the President is setting the Republicans up once again to show just how intransigent they are when it comes to actually doing their job. Will they compromise... LOL, no of course not, even if they get something, or everything they want, why, cause they think they make all the rules and of course as a bunch of modern day conservatives they don't think they have to compromise for  anything, Rush Limbaugh really is the leader of their crazy pants party. Can you imagine being married to one of those guys... I would've killed 'em when we first got married so I'd be out of jail by now. Those dufuses are just that... the dumbest guys around. Let's see how this works for them I say it won't. 


    by tmccarthy0 on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 4:49pm

    You know, I've been hearing this for years. Every time liberals complain about something Obama says or does its, "Obama is playing 3D chess and everyone else is playing checkers." I've never believed that cliche and nothing he's done in the last 4 years has changed my mind.

    He's a center right politician and he's always ready to be pushed farther right to get a compromise. He wants a grand bargain to put "our fiscal house" in order. He wants to cut SS, medicare, and medicaid in exchange for the equivalent in pocket change from the rich. I could find a dozen clips where he told us,  How many times does he have to say it for people to believe it.

    Any cuts in SS will be forever. But those loop holes will be slipped back in in a couple of years.

    We'll never know how serious he is because the republicans won't agree to raise taxes. Sad, that we have to rely on intransigent tea party morons to protect us from our "democratic" president


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 04/06/2013 - 7:01am

    You nailed it ocean kat.  I said it below and I'll say it every chance I get: they should not be using SS and Medicare as bargaining chips.


    by AmiBlue on Sat, 04/06/2013 - 8:36pm

    T-mac, you remain in denial even as your own family budget becomes collateral damage in Obama's war on the New Deal. Gene Sperling has explicitely cited the sequester as a means of dragooning the otherwise recalcitrant left into supporting the Grand Ratfuck. You ( want to) think it is the teabaggers being played, but it is YOU.


    by jollyroger on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 3:52am

    Obama has offered more than 2 dollars in spending cuts for 1 dollar in revenue increases from closing loop holes. That's where he starts negotiation. He has in the past offered 3 to 6 dollars in cuts for 1 in revenue. Any so called grand bargain will be worse if the republicans were smart enough to compromise.

    Many on SS are already substituting, eating old bread, marked down meat, old vegetables, and store brands. Where do they go to substitute, the dumpster out back of the store? The problem will only get worse as less and less jobs come with a pension plan. All the while middle class jobs are disappearing and being replaced with low paying jobs. How are people supposed to contribute to 401k's when they're living hand to mouth?

    Mid-wage jobs, such as construction trades and secretaries, accounted for 60 percent of our employment drop during the recession but made up just 22 percent of the recovery through the first quarter of 2012, according to the most recent Current Population Survey data. Low-wage occupations, such as retail and food service workers, made up 21 percent of the losses and 58 percent of growth.*

    http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Job_Creation/LowWageRecovery2012.pdf?nocdn=1

    Obama said, "The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican."  And I believe him. Every time a tea party candidate wins I celebrate. If it weren't for their no compromise position on taxes that moderate republican in the white house would gladly devastate our social safety net.

     

     


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 5:08pm

      I may be too optimistic, but I think that if Obama does switch Social Security to chained CPI--and it is far from certain that he will-- he will revive the provisions of the Simpson-Bowles plan, which would protect eightysomethings from cuts. I think his heart bleeds.


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 04/05/2013 - 7:35pm

    The eightysomeones will be the banksters and the CEOs; who don't get black lung disease or any of the other ailments many blue collar workers have to endure. These banksters and CEO's had a cush job in their early years and will still be cared for in their golden years.  In short order, the ObamaCare death panels, will make sure, many will never reach eighty.  


    by Resistance on Sat, 04/06/2013 - 12:31am

      There are no death panels.

    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-17/wanted-obamacare-death-p...


    by Aaron Carine on Sat, 04/06/2013 - 7:13am

    Tell that to my 97 year old friend, who is always denied an MRI.  He is never told directly, that he's expected to die; but further diagnostic tests, in order to determine the cause of an ailment are unnecessary. 


    by Resistance on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 5:47am

      There wasn't a government board that ordered he be denied an MRI. That was what people meant by "death panels", not decisions made by insurance companies, which have been condemning people to death since long before Obama became president.


    by Aaron Carine (not verified) on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 8:43am

    Sure, it's not a personal death panel - Palin et al were horridly misleading - it's an impersonal group that decides 67 is close enough to 65 for medicare eligibility, or that in general we're using too much health care.

    And instead of ACA fixing the malicious bastards on the insurance boards, who are constantly denying completely eligible benefits when they can get away with it (I think Grayson or some other Congressman held a good review of this immoral widespread practice), it seems we're continuing on our theory that reigning in use of health care is more important than reigning in overcharging for services.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 9:26am

    Denying benefits will be so commonplace, especially; after tort reform is enacted. All in the name of Cost Containment...... Insurance companies, Hospitals and big pharma need to make money too! ........... "Don't ask what your country can do for you" " SUCK IT UP" cannon fodder. Join the military service and IF YOU SURVIVE, you'll get great healthcare, better than the rest of your fellow slaves, because THEE   Plutocracy, realizes you were willing to die for the them...... Oh I forgot the Veterans are being screwed over too.......... It's an undeniable fact; This country's leadership and power brokers, only cares about money, screw the peasants..........You better hurry and stock up on ammo, before the government figures out, you might rebel or resist the bonds about to be placed upon YOU the slave. Some of our neighbors ARE ALREADY  deciding they no longer enjoy being screwed over...... Public officials are already in fear...........  What do you want to bet,  Republicans already have guns for protection, in the upcoming Civil war?    Some folks want a do over on the establishment of America; especially the New Deal; even if it means another war.     When Rodney King asked "Can't we just get along"? ....  NO, the other side, along with betrayers amongst us, wants to tear down our bulwarks, our defenses, our safety nets.       Ps  Is anyone else having trouble with pressing the enter key to separate sentences or to paste? 


    by Resistance on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 11:47am

    Yes....I have not been able to make a paragraph space either with my enter key for about a week. I also cannot paste any thing. I am only having trouble with it on this site. I have been wondering if it was just me.

    by trkingmomoe on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 3:42pm

    I agree. Everyone seems to act like 68 and 70-year-olds don't need any protection these days, that medical advancements have made us all astoundingly healthy long into geriatrichood, that no one's getting sick at 55 and struggling just to get to the new 67 retirement age, that no one with a tough life is competely worn and gone by 65.

    A while ago conservatives pulled quite the trick by getting every poor working-class schlem to believe that whenever the Dow rose, it pulled up their boat.

    Now we have people believing that average longevity charts apply to everyone.

    It's funny, just a year ago we had Occupy Wall Street influencing even Forbes, like articles like this over wealth distribution:

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneywisewomen/2012/03/21/average-america-vs-the-one-percent/

    But "our guy" won against the evil vulture capitalist, and instead of government doing more redistribution, which is the only real way to counteract wealth inequality, we're doing austerity - i.e. even less redistribution than before.

    Oh sure, the wealthy will pay more tax on earned income over $450K - quite the step-down compromise - but the 1% and 0.1% makes most of its money in unearned capital gains - and there they won a permanent drop to 20% - back to the late Clinton years - even with the 3.8% ACA included, it's lower than George Bush Sr.'s 28%.

    Along with a permanent drop in the estate tax. In 1997, the estate exemption was $600K with a tax of 55%. Now it's $5.25 million, with a tax of 40%. Except for couples, where you can pass on the exemption for a total $10.5 million. Cool, eh?

    Imagine - average wealth for the 99% is $120K, average wealth for the 1% is $8.4 million, but now the super wealth will be able to pass on about 100x the average wealth for no charge, and pay 1/6 less the Clinton rate for what remains.

    So we're all going to have to work harder and longer so that rich people can pass more to their kids and keep more of their income, so that they can spend it wisely to a) help society by creating jobs or b) pampering themselves so they live much much longer than the poor schlep living in a trailer working

    Talked to a waitress a few weeks ago at a popular diner to see the chance anyone would fork over for health care. Not a chance. Walmart looks to be cutting hours to avoid having to buy health care. So with people not going in for health care and not provided by companies, we can expect them to live longer? Raising the age of medicare eligibilitity when we expected to be going for universal coverage? It's all bizarre, but the right has won the messaging - living longer is wrong unless you're rich.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 04/06/2013 - 8:19am

    A while ago conservatives pulled quite the trick by getting every poor working-class schlem to believe that whenever the Dow rose, it pulled up their boat.

    Conservatives did this?

    I'm pretty certain that all during the Clinton era, a certain Kennedy quote was amazingly popular to raise in countering those concerned about the impact his policies would have on working class incomes (NAFTA, Gramm/Leach/Bliley, etc.).

    The phrase "A rising tide lifts all boats" does not ring any bells with you? That was like Robert Rubin's main catchphrase*.

    Personally, I think that nothing would be better for Team Democrat than to acknowledge that both Clinton and Obama are by most measures ideologically dedicated Regan Republicans - conservative warriors. But absent such an admission, it seems absurd to try and blame "conservatives" for selling these ideas to the poor and working-class.

    Democrats are the ones who had the ear of Labor. Democrats are the ones who built their political infrastructure within the middle class. Democrats are the ones who earned the trust of disenfranchised communities. Only Democrats had the trust to influence these constituencies. And indeed, Democrats are the ones who did the heavy lifting in selling them this hogwash. You can't blame that on conservatives (or at least not on folks who are honest about their conservative leanings).

     

    (*Along with "the perfect is the enemy of the good", this tritism is among the only discernable principles consistently promoted by the Third Way Democrats who define the modern party.)


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 1:06pm

    I remember it from the Reagan years, when despite the lack of jobs, the stock market was a call for joy.

    In the Clinton years, a lot of people played the stock market - suckers for sharks who waited for them to make their bets and then doused them at the end of the day - but it was at least their own money they were playing with.

    A lot of people came out of poverty during the Clinton years. A rising tide did raise all boats. Even the 2000-2001 downturn would have been short-lived, but Bush decided to give an unaffordable tax rebate and cut all taxes, leading into our decade of malaise->crisis. (of course 9/11->Iraq overreach....)

    As for NAFTA, it was pretty much a wash - mostly a number of Mexican farmers got hurt. Most anything that went to Mexico would have gone to China instead, and the rise in mutual trade has been fairly balanced.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 3:14pm

    When I was a little girl in the 1950's, the County Home was known as the Poor House.  It was located off a main highway way back on a little hill.  This place was big with several wings and buildings.  We would pass it every Sunday on the way to church.  As my mother would drive by she would point to that huge facility and say, "Don't you dare ever put me in a place like that when I get old."  It was where the elderly ended up that didn't have enough money to take care of themselves or their relatives didn't have the money for their medical costs.  So every Sunday morning my mother would remind us little kids that we had an obligation never to let that happen to her.  Chain CPI makes me think of that Poor House.  When ever there was a down turn in county revenue, the first place that got funding cut was the County Home.  It was a place of neglect also, the grounds and building advertised that neglect.  Do we really want to start back down that road of funding cuts and neglect again? 


    by trkingmomoe on Sat, 04/06/2013 - 4:55am

    I am getting a real kick out of how so many posters here are trying to put a spin on this revelation. Like some political whirling dervishes. It's enough to make a person dizzy just reading them.

     

    But I'm afraid that Ives Smith is correct.  It takes a Democrat to put the sword through the heart of SS and Medicare. Et tu, Obama ? Then fall SS.

    Talk about a lame duck. Everything he's proposed so far has been completely lame.


    by cmaukonen on Sat, 04/06/2013 - 9:09am

    There are wants and needs.  A TV of any vintage , but especially the latest, is a want.  The c-cpi affects the needs of too many people.  Not only does it lower SS benefits, it also raises taxes for everyone because the tax code would be adjusted per the c-cpi.  That make it a double whammy for seniors.

    It's a bad idea on a number of levels, but the most important one in my view is that they should never ever use the insurance programs as bargaining tools.  They're playing with people's lives in a very direct way.


    by AmiBlue on Sat, 04/06/2013 - 8:30pm

    And they don't have the extra health costs for the elderly and limited opportunity to substitute that younger more mobile folks have, and they'll maybe just maybe tweak the payments so ones who are really poor won't suffer while ones who are a little poor can suck it up.

    And there are still no indictments on Wall Street for those who wiped out retirement investments for millions, but those retiring folks will just get to do with less because we have wars to wage and weapons to build and stuff.

    In fact, seniors who complain about CPI are probabably pro-terror, anti-American, no? Blame it on OBL, that's why we have to spend more on a few Muslims in the desert with IED's than we did against Russia with nuclear warheads and a fleet of tanks.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 2:37am

    The truth is, supporting cuts in SS and Medicare is a political career ender. It is still the 3rd rail in politics. Anyone inside the Washington bubble who thinks that has change are deluding themselves. Democrats in the House and Senate that votes for Chained CPI will be losing elections.

    by trkingmomoe on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 4:20pm

    No, supporting cuts in SS and Medicare is the current wisdom, what serious people believe, and only non-serious people ignore.

    We've lost the messaging, and we're screwed. Here, try this one on for size, from 2011:

    AARP, the powerful lobbying group for older Americans, is dropping its longstanding opposition to cutting Social Security benefits, a move that could rock Washington's debate over how to revamp the nation's entitlement programs.

    The decision, which AARP hasn't discussed publicly, came after a wrenching debate inside the organization. In 2005, the last time Social Security was debated, AARP led the effort to kill President George W. Bush's plan for partial privatization. AARP now has concluded that change is inevitable, and it wants to be at the table to try to minimize the pain.

    "The ship was sailing. I wanted to be at the wheel when that happens," said John Rother, AARP's long-time policy chief and a prime mover behind its change of heart.

    The shift, which has been vetted by AARP's board and is now the group's stance, could have a dramatic effect on the debate surrounding the future of the federal safety net, from pensions to health care, given the group's immense clout.

    "If they come around and say they're ready to do something, it will be like the Arctic icecap cracking," said former Sen. Alan Simpson, co-chairman of a White House commission on the deficit. He has frequently assailed the group as a barrier to progress.

    While Rother soon left, Huff Post notes:

    The invite list for 2012 suggests that AARP is still very much open to cutting Social Security and Medicare, as a majority of this year's expected "thought leaders" have thoughts that involve slashing Social Security.

    Now AARP is running around saying cutting Social Security with CPI for the Fiscal Cliff is a bad idea, as is lowering Medicare - but will anyone take them seriously anymore?

    They're all waiting for that Nixon goes to China moment - why, I can't imagine, but that's what adults in politics seem to do, do stupid things and hope they make us look incredibly smart.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 5:05pm

    AARP is hearing from membership to get off the Chained CPI bandwagon or lose membership.  That means less people to sell insurance to, which is their bread and butter.  In fact it was more then half their membership that put pressure on them. 


    by trkingmomoe on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 12:04am

    Those who do vote against OUR ...SS,  will be called courageous by their Washington insider friends. .....In the next election  the electorate will again be told " it's always better to vote for a Social Security, medicare cutting democrat than a republican. Were being screwed by the two capitalist parties; their "love of money" brings US many injurious things, "stabbing US with many pains".  Greed rules


    by Resistance on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 6:48pm

    You under estimate the public's ability to threaten Democrats with primary challengers.  The Chained CPI will hurt retired single women the most and that will bind more women to the growing political sisterhood of voters.  We are not shy about expressing our dissatisfaction to the congress.   


    by trkingmomoe on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 12:38am

    You underestimate people's ability to vote against their own interests, especially if it's defending the ramparts against Muslim terrorists, treasonous liberals, God-offending homosexuals, atheist socialists, abortion murderers, anti-Christmas visigoths, et al.

    As for the weight of females on public debate, Sandra Fluke's sufferance is not so atypical, nor the demise of birth control in ACA. Women have only 4 of 23 cabinet positions - including the now marginalized Susan Rice at UN, the Small Business Administration and acting Commerce secretary.

    [Penny Pritzker may be up for official Commerce nominee, which might be one of the worst choices ever - debate]


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 4:24am

    Hmm...I don't see how your argument ties into my statement.  Far right issue voters and cabinet appointments?????  Silly me.  I must be on the wrong thread.


    by trkingmomoe on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 5:42am

    The growing sisterhood of voters hasn't had too much luck of late.

    Women's issues are often an object of political scorn & ridicule these days, and while more women were elected to Congress last cycle, the Administration spends more time talking to the good ol' boys from the GOP looking for common ground.

    So good luck pushing the hurt on retired single women as a cause - Obama's looking for a poster child for shared pain, and that's likely good enough proof that his middle-way's working.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 10:21am


    by trkingmomoe on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 4:56am

    My point was not that women aren't organized and fight back - the point was they have trouble getting heard and followed by the boys' club in Washington. I'll be thrilled if they can get CPI shit-canned, and even more thrilled if they can get Washington to focus on jobs and growth, and not job-killing austerity.

    (oddly enough, our brainiacs are over in Europe telling them to not do austerity, because they have to grow their way out of the recession. Amazing simple Keynesian medicine can't fly for a domestic audience)


    by Anonymous PP (not verified) on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 6:56am

     Obama's cuts in Medicare are not cuts to people's benefits. He's really the one protecting the safety net from the Republicans, whatever else we can criticize him for.

    Here is a version of Obama's plans for Social Security which is more encouraging than the gloom and doom scenarios we are hearing here.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/07/chained-cpi-social-security-oba...


    by Aaron Carine on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 8:00pm

    1) What does closing loopholes have to do with cutting benefits for seniors? Yeah great, I'll be living on cat food, but some rich guy will pay more in taxes that will then get spent on drones in Mali or North Dakota, or supporting corn growers in Iowa.

    Note: budget for Afghanistan War this year - $86 billion, which doesn't include horrendous medical bills for Vets we'll be paying for decades. 6 years to "wind down" this folly.

    2) Safeguards for seniors, right. Many people lost their life savings, retirement, homes in 2008-2010. But we'll make sure a few seniors don't make the newspapers, while everyone else can eat spam instead of tuna.

    Government couldn't even prosecute a few banks for gross impropriety, selling worthless assets. 1 woman from a small paperwork firm got dinged for robosigning, while the banks got small fines that mostly amount to deductible deals for pushing money into new business.

    Switching to CPI's a cut - even while health costs for many continue to grow fast, and one of the big complaints about the CPI is it's a general measure, and not one that looks at spending for seniors in particular - including health costs.

    Who's going to pay for the extra measures to differentiate between types of seniors? Currently, it's simple - you're 65, you get your check based on payments. Retire earlier, your check is a bit smaller. What's our new plan - means testing on a 75-year-old to see if he's making too much money, meaning we're focused on his income tax return? Some social worker will notice granny isn't doing well, so she'll suggest she gets more? Or they'll just curve benefits so you get more after 80? Well hey, if you cut payouts on 95% of beneficiaries, you might be able to give 3% back to the remaining 5%...

    Businesses have been doing reate since 2009, record profits. People, not so much. But everyone must share the pain equally somehow, even though they won't. Sequester cuts won't hurt contractors for another year, but social programs and DoD staffing will get cut this year. Take a look at black unemployment as this trainwreck goes forward, where blacks make up typically from 1/3 to 1/2 of DoD staffing.

    If it were 1 thing being cut, it's manageable, but we're talking about a trifecta/quadrifecta of higher medicare payments, lower social security payments, lost houses/mortgages & jobs & investment income, some pensions robbed, and still higher medical costs. Even local governments lost a lot in the process so can't pick up the slack. But don't worry, government will protect you.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 3:57am

      Switching to chained CPI would be a cut if there weren't safeguards to prevent cuts in benefits to eightysomethings. The Obama administration says there would be safeguards--probably something along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles plan.


    by Aaron Carine on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 7:08am

    It's a cut for me when I retire.

    I already have 2 years extra to work for eligibility.

    Now I'll get less per year, unless someone decides I'm poor enough and they'll toss some triscuits my way. By 2050, retirement will be at 68, by 2070 at 69. What a bunch of assholes - it's no longer focused on what I put in - what I earned - but what some scumsucking rich suckups to lobbyists decides will be my marginal level of poverty, what I can substitute for real stuff.

    67 is already late to be retiring for many people - compared to any sane developed country - but let's just tweak the uncomfortableness in the US a little bit more.

    If I manage to live to 87, yes, I may see more than before than I would have otherwise. I'd say they're making a pretty safe bet, cutting benefits completely at 65-66, tweaking down yearly payments for 20 years, and giving a little back at 87.

    Simpson-Bowles couldn't even win over the people on their committee, and I can't fathom believing once they start cutting benefits that any proposed safeguards will be sufficiently protected. These are "entitlements" they're raging against - never mind that Social Security is perfectly solvent until 2037, 24 years from now, and mostly solvent after that. We have high unemployment we can't tackle now, loss of homes, wars we can't seem to extricate ourselves from easily, but we're going to be grownups and fix the pseudo-problems of tomorrow? These people are bastards. I don't trust them more than I can gob-spit.

    Look at the range of people for whom health premiums are starting to rise, due to dealing with privately-purchased policies - even though the US already pays about 1 1/2-2 times per capita that of other developed countries - after all that political wheeling and dealing,  weren't there supposed to be cost safeguards on health as well? Bend the curve slightly, can't reverse it?

    PP is not impressed.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 10:52am

      Well, PP, I guess I'm just more willing to believe Obama's words than you are. He endorsed Simpson-Bowles, so I'm guessing their safeguards are the ones he has in mind.

     I'm displeased with Obama for signing the bill   authorizing detention without trial, for dragging us into war in Libya, for failing to leave Afghanistan, and for war crimes committed by drones. But I think he's gotten some bum raps here; a big difference between him and Romney is their attitude towards the vitally important safety net.


    by Aaron Carine on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 4:06pm

    Here's your guy you're trusting with Social Security:

    http://socialsecurity-works.org/2010/simpsonrant/

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/359805/col-simps...

    Here he declares Social Security was never meant as a retirement program:

    http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page/alan-simpson-sends-angry-letter-seniors-...

    And here's a bit of discussion about billionaire Pete Peterson, who's been pushing his doom and gloom about Social Security for some time, and it seems to be sticking. I blame him more than Obama, but then, if Obama supports this agenda, I'm not sympathetic to either.

    http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/09/business/la-fi-mo-pete-peterson-...

    [Note: do appreciate your kind debating and pointing out justifications for your views - if there were a different bunch, I might believe the safeguards as well, but at this point I'm entirely skeptical. Obama has wanted to "do something" about Social Security since weeks after he was elected. It's the grownup thing he wants to be remembered for.]


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 5:43pm

      I don't see that the links to Simpson's words demonstrate that he wants to destroy Social Security. He was talking about the safeguards I was talking about. Maybe I'm naive, but I think Obama wants to protect the safety net; it was a crucial difference between him and Romney.


    by Aaron Carine on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 8:54pm

    No, I thought it demonstrated that he thought SS wasn't a retirement program, and that he's kind of a jerk. Nobody in the committee besides Simpson-Bowles could agree, so they just released their idea to the papers. Do I even known how much these safeguards would be or trust that they'll survive in any seriousness out of committee? I think it means compromising on age and CPI, and then the safeguards are where we start bargaining down to 0. But that's just me.

    And I think once you start playing rules with Social Security, it's just open season on it in 2 years, 4 years, 10 years, every time we reach a "fiscal cliff" and we need to exact some more revenge. "Oh, but it's only 0.1% this time..., only for those under 75". Death by a thousand cuts is good enough for the hawks in DC.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 12:42am

    I can't say I didn't see it coming.

    From the November 2010 essay at the link:

    Given our present economic reality, it was incredibly foolish for Obama to be bullied into forming this Deficit Commission and thus provide a rhetorical vehicle for the slash-and-burn neo-Hoovers to use in their effort to drive the middle class in America over a cliff.

    And:

    America grows desperate in need of political leaders who actually have sufficient courage to truly "Change the Way Washington Does Business." Do the Democrats at last find their principles in place of their campaign finance pocketbooks? Or do we revert once again to the pay-to-play politics-as-usual that has dragged us all so low these last thirty-plus years, and which George (No, the OTHER George!) warned us about in his prescience...


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 10:55pm

    Bullied into forming the Deficit Commission? That's not how I remember it.

    Obama wanted it. He wanted a grand bargain and he thought a deficit commission would be the way to get it. He pushed for legislation in congress to set up the commission. He endorsed the bill. The republicans, even several of those who co-sponsored the legislation, withdrew their support and defeated the bill.

    So what does Obama do when he couldn't get a bipartisan congressional deficit commission? He sets up a presidential commission on his own without the support or endorsement of congressional leaders of either party. Sure there were some blue dog democrats that wanted it too, but it was Obama's baby and Obama's choice.

    He's always wanted a grand bargain, he's always been pushing for it, and cuts in SS, medicare, and medicaid were always the price he was more than willing to pay for his grand bargain.


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 3:09am

    Good point, kat!

    I stumbled over the same "bullied into" phrasing as you, for it certainly doesn't comport with my memory. It was more like it just came out of the blue. There was no demand for it. It was not an obvious move for the Prez to take.

    I'm not so certain, however, that I would go so far as to credit it as a misstep along the way to getting a "grand bargain." I see it in far more sinister terms than that.

    Obama is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the Plutocrats who are so vigorously engaged in reversing the New Deal and eliminating the middle class that grew out of it. In his role as the supposed liberal standard-bearer in this bread and circuses we once knew as a legitimate political system, Obama is truly the only one who could introduce such a measure which has been otherwise viewed as the "third rail" in these austerity "discussions."

    He performed admirably, right along with the script he'd been handed.


    by SleepinJeezus on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 11:17am

     Also, Barack Obama reportedly supports tying Social Security benefits to the Chained CPI.  Discus

    Sure. The devil is the details.

    It's possible to imagine a package of measures including the chained CPI -which BTW I don't like-but also  restoring a sensible inheritance tax without the $10 Million/couple exemption, and   taxing hedge fund managers on their income at earned income  rates, and a 70% tax on incremental income over a million, etc. etc............ which I would support..

    Instead what I read above is:

    PP

     I hate Obama

    Some one else

     Why?

    PP.

    I imagine him doing something terrible.

    SOE

    . You're right. It's hateful of him to behave so terribly in your imagination that you hate him.

    I don't hate Obama for the things  I've imagined him doing.

     

     


    by Flavius on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 10:49pm

    Oh give me a break.

    I didn't cotton to Bush trying to turn Social Security private, why should I like Obama trying to cut benefits?

    I didn't like the 2 year 2% Social Security holiday because it gives people the idea that pay-ins to Social Security aren't important, that it's an "entitlement".

    And "grown-ups" in Washington always talk about cutting entitlements - wow, 2013, and what's on the chopping block? Who coulda predicted flying airplanes into Social Security?

    But it's all "I hate Obama"? Eff off, you twit. We've got war 2 more years at $87billion per, prisons without habeas corpus that were supposed to go away & secret drone wars no one oversees, high unemployment, we just went through a huge banking theft/meltdown and mortgage foreclosure/repossession, only to cut the safety net on seniors...

    What happened to raising taxes above $200K, rescinding the Bush-era tax cuts? It turned into $450K, and now we have to tax granny. But you talk about a dreamland now where we can put the cat back in the bag, after 12 years of hammering on the estate tax, we'll get this $10 million back on the table, it'll be lowered? Who's going to do that? After the financial meltdown, with popular support and anger skyhigh, our guy wouldn't even lower bonuses on hedge fund managers who'd stolen from  Grandma Millie, because they were indispensable - but I'm supposed to believe we'll find some savior down the road who'll cut hedge fund rates? We can't even get DoJ to effectively stop illegal mortgage foreclosures - banks would be mad, you know.

    And you think it's just some personal shit? I'm just not into suspension of disbelief - Obama doesn't like liberals, and when he gets a chance to cut a liberal's expectations in half, he feels he's succeeded. If he's bargaining with Lindsey Graham, I don't trust him. I saw the results of his big tax cuts instead of more stimulus in 2009, negotiating with Big PhRma and insurance companies and not passing ACA through resolution the first year. I saw his team that went in to negotiate with the car companies and made sure the finance arms got 100 cents on the dollar after stripping assets for years. So no, I don't expect the devil in the details over safeguards for granny to get any better.

    The system is perfectly solvent until 2037, 24 years away. I'm perfectly happy to kick that can down the road a few years more, my unrealistic hope that we'll find a non-austerity-thinking time where we can just add some revenue to Social Security input and not change the structure or complexity.

    You'd think Congress had no problems of today, so has to go find challenges in 2037. Amazing.

    So explain to me the things I "imagine him doing", and explain in detail what these amazing safeguards you see on the table in "reality", rather than some lukewarm "we'll help the poorest plus raise the rate at 85" that overcome cutting senior benefits for 20 years and changing the simple formulas Social Security rests on. And tell me what the chances are even that these safeguards will pass, vs watered down more as part of the Grand Bargain.

    But Obama has been talking about cutting Social Security since the beginning, January 2009 and before. Here are some way-back links so you don't think I just came across this idea: NYTimes with Lindsey Graham wanting to "help", the American, and JaneHamsher/FiredogLake. The Simpson-Bowles committee was packed with people "concerned" about Social Security, and progressives were left out (and called it the "cat food commission" for its pre-ordained outcomes). And then when the committee couldn't get the pre-ordained NixonGoesToChina agreement they were anointed for, Simpson & Bowles just did a speaking tour to get that little vision accepted anyway. So here we are 4 years later, and wow, it's like I can predict the future....


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 1:26am

    You've convicted Obama's of being guilty of you're not liking him.

    Talking about social security is talking.

    Packing the Simpson Bowles committee resulted in 0. It didn't have any effect. 

    Suspending social security withholdings for two years was welcome to a lot of people who couldn't afford to pay them.

    With respect  to

    So explain to me the things I "imagine him doing

     

     eliminate the middle man , just reread anything you've written here. As to

     Eff off, you twit.

     a piece of advice:   you and I know you aren't going to persuade me of anything and don't even want to , but you certainly want to persuade others. Writing like an adult would help.

     


    by Flavius on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 8:22am

    Confirming, for now, that indeed there are none so blind as those who will not see.

    Your loyalty is so, um, quaint Flavius. Hug it close for warmth. Let it sustain you. Just understand that some require more than that.


    by SleepinJeezus on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 8:57am

     

    I wish it were a better world. But I make do with the one we're stuck with.


    by Flavius on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 9:39am

    Is this making do, or is it embracing wholeheartedly and offering excuses for why nobody should expect (or call for) something better?


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 1:59pm

    I wrote like an adult, and all you could get out of it was "he hates him some Obama". So I brought it down to a term you could consume. The customer's always right, even in the market of ideas, no?

    I've long made it known that I don't need to like a politician - he/she can be the biggest bastard in the world, and do the awfulest things in private, and as long as I'm happy with their attempted or better achieved policies, I'm content. Even Nixon brought out 500,000 troops in just over 4 years. This administration couldn't even get 35,000 out - somehow threw 65,000 more in.

    Re: Social Security holiday, yes, the poor were desperate for some help, and if it came as a Social Security holiday, they didn't care - they would have likely swapped a month of income in 2020 just for some help that year. Does that change the fact that the Social Security undermined the reputation of the program, that it could have been done as a check in the mail as has been done in other times without 1) taking an unrelated slice of revenue from the program and 2) giving the GOP ammo to say it's an entitlement?


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 11:12am

    What is so frustrating, is that WE the people as a Nation, having gone through the Great Depression, came to the realization that the capitalism of that time period, failed us miserably. So We the People in order to preserve or carve out for ourselves a safety net. Never again would we allow the suffering, brought upon us, by the failures of the financial system and it's controllers (manipulators). We the People carved out a percentage of of ALL income, to be used for the benefit of the people and not  for the benefit of the greedy cronies of capitalism. It is not an entitlement, it is a safeguard,  WE the people insisted upon......... The crony capitalists have the majority of the generated wealth already, leave us People, to the crumbs we have allowed ourselves to have a small percentage. Keep their hands out of our cookie jar, make everyone pay, eliminate exemptions and carve outs. Eliminate caps.......... .....I'm afraid, Obama has no intentions to frame the issue in the way it needs to be addressed. He'll let the slaves fight amongst themselves, again,  for the crumbs that fall from the masters tables just as they did prior to the enactment of SS. ....... The greedy bastards not satisfied with their majority percentage, they want the slave's crumbs too. 


    by Resistance on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 1:47pm

    Packing the Simpson Bowles committee resulted in 0. It didn't have any effect.

    What the hell are you talking about? Social Security/Medicare weren't even a part of the commission's mandate. The report they produced is the point at which entitlements were officially "placed on the table."

    So, sure the specific proposal didn't go anywhere - if we're assessing merely on it being adopted as legislative policy. But to say the most pivotal event to forming the current intellectual argument for cutting our social support infrastructure was a zero? That steps beyond being intellectually lazy into flat out disingenuous.

    I suppose analysis is easier if you imagine that every moment happens in isolation and has no impact on future events ... and then ignore any moments that don't match what you want to believe?


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 1:24pm

    Bingo!


    by SleepinJeezus on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 5:48pm

    Please. I hope I'm not disingenuous.Dumb possibly. In fact almost certainly. But not disingenuous. That's above my grade in pay.

    I'm happy to admit that I have no inside knowledge of what forms current intellectual argument . Certainly W thought social security was in play when he began his second term with a brief ineffective campaign to privatize it. But how could it not be on the table for the Right Commentariat. Every minute, every day.. It's good for the poor and the elderly. Horrors !

    I don't want to believe anything but the best about social security. But it's been in danger ever since the New Yorker cartoon with someone suggesting  "Let's go down to the Translux and boo Roosevelt." Some time in 1938.

     


    by Flavius on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 8:28pm

     Right now, I believe Obama when he says he will take measures to prevent major cuts in Social Security benefits under chained CPI. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.


    by Aaron Carine on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 8:50am

    Depends on what he means by major? Why is Obama even talking cuts;  at all.  We need more revenue; so take the caps off all types of income. Make everyone pay the premium, for this SS insurance, even if they'll never use it and  if they dont like it ....Tough   


    by Resistance on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 9:53am

      According to what I've read, switching to CPI would mean a little cut--maybe a hundred a year--in the benefits of younger seniors. Obama hasn't said anything specific about that. A substantial cut would occur when recipients were in their eighties, but Obama says he would take measures to prevent that--probably the Simpson-Bowles measures.


    by Aaron Carine on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 4:41pm

    The problem should at the very least be framed correctly. I keep seeing figures estimating how much the government will "save" by adjustments to S.S. That is like saying that my bank would save money if it didn't have to return the full amount that I had put into a savings account. S.S. is in a dedicated fund which has been paid for. It would have been a bit dumb to put the billions collected for that fund under a mattress somewhere while borrowing that many additional billions from China, so the money was lent to our government.instead. Still, that debt, held in bonds, is exactly as legitimate as the ones bought by creditors all over the world. Nobody is suggesting that our government could legitimately save a lot of money by defaulting on our debt owed to other countries or by arbitrarily change the terms of repayment. Yet.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 11:37am

    Yeah, when someone owes me money but decides he'll pay me in 3 months rather than next week, always makes me happy. In that case though it's the same amount - it's figuring out what the interest rate should have been, often not there for personal loans.

    In this case, it's the government hoping I die first before I collect too much, so slow-balling odds are ever in their favor, as Effie from Hunger Games would say.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 12:49pm

    Oh yeah, this is just a great political move by Obama. It will show just how intransigent republicans are on taxes. Unless the republicans run against the SS cuts and portray themselves as the protectors of seniors and SS. Of course they would never ever be that craven.

    BLITZER: Let's get some Republican reaction to what we just heard from the President of the United States. Representative Greg Walden of Oregon is joining us right now. He's the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

    Congressman, what did you think of the president's remarks?

    REP. GREG WALDEN (R-OR), CHAIRMAN, NRCC: Well, I thought it very intriguing in that the budget really lays out kind of a shocking attack on seniors, if you will. And we haven't seen all the detail yet, and we'll look at it, but I'll tell you, when you're going after seniors the way he's already done on Obamacare, taking $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare, and now coming back at seniors again, I think you're crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine, certainly, and around the country. I think he's going to have a lot of pushback from some of the major senior organizations on this and Republicans, as well.

    And this is a budget that doesn't balance. At the end of the day, you can have all the flowery rhetoric, but I'm a numbers guy and this doesn't add up. It does not balance. We've passed the Ryan budget. It does balance in ten years; it will put us on a path to grow the economy and jobs. And, again, gets us to where we have a balanced budget. This is 65 days late and it doesn't add up.

    BLITZER: Well, let's talk about these proposed changes that the president is putting forward when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, the shocking proposals that you say the president's putting forward that could affect seniors. What's so shocking about changing that CPI, that consumer price index the way that you would determine how much inflation would go ahead with increases for Social Security recipients, for example?

    WALDEN: Well, once again, you're trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors and I just think it's not the right way to go.


    by ocean-kat on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 2:13pm