Harsh Benefit Cuts
Kevin’s got the details on the Bush Social Security plan. It turns out that my initial impressions were incorrect1. The President’s plan isn’t to help to poor, but to not hurt the poor. Here’s the breakdown of who’s gonna get screwed :
Basically, low income earners ($16K/year) currently get about 49% of their income replaced by Social Security. Under the Pozen plan, this would stay the same. Medium income workers ($36K/year), however, would see their replacement rate fall from 36% to 23% by the year 2100. The replacement rate for higher income workers ($58K/year) would fall to 14% and for maximum income workers ($90K/year) to 9%.
Kevin also includes a graphic, but I’ve gone ahead and recreated it to give a more accurate impression of the President’s goals :
In short, the President wants to gut the benefits you receive on the payroll taxes you’ve been paying for your entire life. Of course, not everyone’s benefits. He’s got to keep some benefits untouched so he can pretend to care about the poor.
1 : That’s what I get for believing what the president says.
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Kevin is being too kind, once again, to the Bushies. The president’s plan seems obvious to me: He wants to take away the shared stake we all have in SS, by making it something only poor people benefit from in the long term. it’s a divide and conquer strategy.
He’s clearly waging class warfare, by making it so that the lower middle to extreme upper classes won’t give a shit about SS, something they won’t even benefit from. Furthmore, he’s laying the groundwork now for people to actually resent SS recipients in the future.
Seriously, think about the difficulty trying to get non-poor people to approve school funding in poor areas of a city. No matter how beneficial it may be to the community overall, the right wing have enabled a culture of selfishness so successfully that even lower middle class people are pissed off about school funding. “Why should I pay for the schools of kids who don’t live I my neighborhood and whose parents are too poor to work“. This is not a straw man argument, I have heard people say that very thing to me more times than I care to rememebr.
Essentially, Bush is changing tactics – The new plan is to sound like he cares for the poor, but in the long run to turn future SS recipients into the “Welfare Queens” of 2015. And if we let him get away with it, you can bet we’ll hear aguments about a “Culture of saving and hard work” used against what little remains of SS by this time.
Comment by Ross A Lincoln — April 29, 2005 @ 11:58 am
21st Century Welfare Queens
Greg over at the Talent Who has linked to Kevin Drum’s summation of Bush’s Welfare scam plan, with commentary of his own: Kevin’s got the details on the Bush Social Security plan. It turns out that my initial impressions were…
Trackback by This Space For Rent — April 29, 2005 @ 1:29 pm
Actually, this “new” proposed benefit cut was outlined in the NY Times some months ago as a Bush administration proposed option to turn social security into a welfare benefit for the poor – I believe Paul Krugman had some very enlightening insights about this. In any event, it’s obvious that Bush has pulled the “cut” threat out of his magic hat so middle class Americans will now (he hopes)clamor towards his “privitization package”. Fear tactics- that’s what I call it. Never, ever, underestimate the covert manipulation behind every proposal that comes out of this president’s office. He and his cronies are determined to destroy our way of life.
Comment by Judi Blue — April 30, 2005 @ 10:22 pm