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May 02nd, 2006S4 Publishes in Human Events
May 02nd 10:31:04 AM
S4 National Director and Co-Founder Patrick Wetherille published an opinion piece about the Trustees' Report at Human Events Online today. Check it out!
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14479
Posted by Patrick Wetherille| Comments (0)
John Rother, are you serious??
May 02nd 09:00:24 AM
The Social Security Administration released the 2006 Trustees report yesterday. Among the shocking findings is the fact that failure to reform the system last year will cause the Trust Fund to be exhausted in 2040--one year earlier than expected.
The Trustees stated in their Message to the Public that
The fundamentals of the financial status of the Social Security and Medicare remain problematic...We do not believe the currently projected long-run growth rates of Social Security or Medicare are sustainable under current financing arrangements.
Put otherwise, Social Security is in serious trouble according to the experts.
John Rother, Policy Director at AARP, appears not to have read this statement before AARP sent out their press release about the report yesterday. According to Rother, "Today's report on Social Security should reassure Americans approaching retirement that this system remains strong."
S4 would like to ask John Rother: "are you serious?"
It seems this is just one more instance of AARP blatantly misleading the public.
Posted by Nicola Moore| Comments (0)
May 01st, 20062006 Trustees Report Shows Social Security is Still in Serious Trouble
May 01st 02:48:19 PM
Moments ago, the Social Security Trustees released their 2006 Annual Report on the state of the current system. Not surprisingly, last year's failure to reform the system with personal accounts has made the outlook for the system bleak. S4 will have a thorough analysis of the report soon, but here are some highlights from the Social Security News Release
- The projected point at which tax revenues will fall below program costs comes in 2017 -- the same as the estimate in last year’s report.
- The projected point at which the Trust Funds will be exhausted comes in 2040 -- one year earlier than the projection in last year’s report.
- The projected actuarial deficit over the 75-year long-range period is 2.02 percent of taxable payroll -- up .09 percent from last year’s report.
- Over the 75-year period, the Trust Funds require additional revenue equivalent to $4.6 trillion in today’s dollars to pay all scheduled benefits. This unfunded obligation is $600 billion higher than the amount estimated last year.
Jo Anne Barnhart, Commissioner of Social Security, had this to say: "With the release of this report, we have another opportunity to send a signal to younger generations of Americans that we, as a society, are committed to strengthening this important program for them."
S4 also has another opportunity to tell Congress it is time to get your heads out of the sand. This report shows that the failure to reform the system last year cost our generation too much, and its time to get serious about reform through personal accounts!
Posted by Nicola Moore| Comments (0)
Neil Cavuto slams AARP for hypocrisy
May 01st 07:02:38 AM
| After being one of the most outspoken opponents of Social Security reform, AARP is winding up to offer several mutual funds to its members according to this Washington Post story. |
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The three funds _ conservative, moderate and aggressive _ are designed to simplify investment choices for seniors, AARP Financial said in a news release issued Monday. Each fund, carrying the AARP brand, invests in a diversified mix of stocks, bonds and other securities, with the allocation based on the level of risk, it said.
The funds are part of a new move by the powerful seniors lobby to compete for the dollars of baby boomers _ a huge and affluent cohort. AARP has been moving beyond selling discounted products and services, such as travel, insurance and computers, to its members and has developed its own financial products, consulting service and "seal of approval" program.
Does it seem hypocritical that a company that just last year was calling the stock market a "risky parlor game" is now singing the praises of their new mutual funds?
S4 thinks so, and so does Neil Cavuto. He claims that AARP is trying to have its cake and eat it too, exemplified by its efforts to corner the investment market for seniors by opposing the plan to allow Americans to invest a portion of their Social Security contributions in mutual funds.
Let's face it, folks. By expanding from a seniors organization that works on behalf of seniors to a business that exists to extract money from seniors, AARP has outgrown its mandate.
Watch the video of the segment by clicking here.
Posted by Jeremy Tunnell| Comments (1)
April 28th, 2006Long Live Social Security Reform
April 28th 09:20:45 AM
"If Social Security reform is dead, then how come so many people are still trying to kill it?" This shrewd observation made by Donald Luskin correctly points out that Social Security reform is not on the backburner. Thanks in part to the opposition, the issue is very much alive.
As Luskin continues,"It can't die. Reform is inevitable, because the Social Security system really is in crisis, in the sense that the accounting mirage of the Trust Fund doesn't hold any real assets to pay off the system's obligations."
We will get a new chance to find out just how bad the crisis has become on Monday because the word on the street is that the 2006 Trustees Report is going to be released. The chances that Trustees will find that Social Security magically reformed itself are zero, so we can see just how much damage Congress's failure to give us personal accounts last year has caused.
Be sure to check back in on Monday for a full update on the Trustees Report, and in the meantime you can prepare for the release of the report by reading Luskin's article here.
Posted by Nicola Moore| Comments (0)
April 26th, 2006Myths dispelled! Learn Why Personal Accounts Really Do Benefit African Americans
April 26th 02:15:27 PM
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) recently released a report, "African Americans and Social Security: The Implications of Reform Proposals," that claims personal accounts would "have an adverse effect on the African American community."
But Donald Luskin, Chief Investment Officer for Trend Macrolytics LLC, an investment consulting firm, demonstrates the report is misleading and fraught with contradictions.
It's actually the current system that is unfair to minorities. As Luskin notes, "...if an African American and a white worker have the same lifetime wage history and contributions, the African American worker can expect less of a net return on his or her investment in the retirement portion of Social Security, due to differences in life expectancy."
Not only would African Americans benefit from a higher return with personal accounts, but the fact that accounts would be inheritable uniquely benefits African Americans. Luskin points out that " [t]he Social Security Administration's MINT model analyses have consistently shown that survivors are the biggest gainers from reforms that include personal accounts. That's because they have an opportunity to inherit accounts from their spouses. Inheritances would be of even greater relative benefit to child survivors, who could inherit personal account balances in addition to their traditional Social Security benefits. These inheritances would provide nest eggs that would disproportionately benefit African Americans."
Get the rest of the details and learn more about the CBPP's contradictions by reading the full article here .
Posted by Nicola Moore| Comments (3)
S4 Chapter Leader Chris Rogers gets published!
April 26th 11:32:31 AM
Chris Rogers, a sophomore at Haverford College, PA and S4's campus Chapter Leader, recently published a debate piece with fellow student Adrian Bleifuss-Prados. In the article, Chris does a fantastic job of arguing in favor of personal accounts, stating:
"The problem is that the trust fund is gone. Congress has been spending it, and paying the Social Security Administration back in IOUs. The surplus that Social Security supposedly has already been spent by the government, and as time goes on, these will become increasingly expensive for the government to pay back."
The article is a great piece to read, as it addresses many of the questions people have when discussing Social Security reform. S4 believes that this kind of honest and open debate is the key to fixing the system. We encourage all students to actively engage in such dialogue.
For the full article, please visit: http://www.biconews.com/article/view/4895
Posted by Patrick Wetherille| Comments (0)
Tennessee Blitz...
April 26th 09:43:04 AM
I'm a little over halfway through my trip through Tennessee, and i'm finding that students are just as excited about reform as I am.
We've got a new chapter at Belmont University in Nashville, thanks to Whitney and Kristin. Our Vanderbilt chapter, one of our strongest, is becoming one of our biggest and most active.
I spoke to a few groups at my alma mater (UTK), and I found a lot of interest there, even among the Engineering Honor Society of which I used to be President back in the day.
It's not just students either. I got to sit down with David Davis, who is running for the empty seat in Tennessee's first district. He didn't even have to think when he said that he was totally on board with our cause.
It's nice to have politicians that will still stand up for the right things despite the political climate, but I think that Mr. Davis will see that being in favor of reform will help him in the long run.
Today, more meetings with Vance Cheek and Dan Smith (also running for the same seat). Hope they are just as enthusiastic about reform!
Posted by Jeremy Tunnell| Comments (0)
April 25th, 2006S4 Goes to Boston
April 25th 03:38:12 PM
Yesterday, S4 held an interdisciplinary panel discussion at Boston University, and the event was great fun!
The speakers included Boston University Professor Larry Kotlikoff, Suffolk University Professor Charles Rounds, and FreedomWorks Policy Director, Max Pappas.
The panelists spoke about the economics, legal issues, and political aspects of Social Security reform respectively. The speeches were very informative, but the most dynamic portion of the discussion came during the question and answer period in which the panelists engaged in an impromptu debate about possible reform plans.
By the end, Prof. Kotlikoff had suggested an economic policy, Prof. Rounds was able to tell him if it would comply with the law, and Mr. Pappas was able to say whether such ideas were politically feasible. It was really exciting to see so many thoughtful scholars working together!
During the Day, S4's Education Director, Nicola Moore, also held a "Social Security Bake Sale" in the BU Student Union. The sale was a tremendous success. Loads of students stopped by the table and they were actually more interested in asking questions about Social Security than the cookies and brownies.
One staff member, who was entitled to take cookies for free given his age, even gave S4 a $5 donation. "I don't need a cookie," he said. "I just believe in the cause."
Posted by Nicola Moore| Comments (0)
April 22nd, 2006Smoke and mirrors...that's all you get with your "guarantee"
April 22nd 05:35:10 PM
A good article was published at Tech Central Station yesterday about why reform isn't (and shouldn't be) dead. A couple of excerpts:
Nobody really knows the exact size of future obligations created by today's payroll taxes: Future benefits will be paid under future program rules, and the program's financial insolvency makes those rules uncertain.
Opponents of personal accounts ignore that uncertainty and continue to proclaim that Social Security constitutes "guaranteed" retirement support.
The only way of "guaranteeing" benefits is to give everyone ownership over their retirements or pass a bill requiring a supermajority to alter benefits...and the latter option isn't going to happen.
Simply assuming that future benefits would be paid through higher taxes and ignoring the risky nature of Social Security's "intergenerational compact" appears to be a sure recipe for disaster.
Read the whole thing at TCS Daily
Posted by Jeremy Tunnell| Comments (1)
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