Hey, when we're running trillion dollar deficits, it only makes sense to muck about with the only program well in the black.

Yeah cause its not like you're going to have to pay for health reform.

If you cut social security, that's a source of revenue. Don't you believe in setting priorities? You might say Social Security is fine, but you can definitely get revenue from it by tinkering (increasing the eligibility age, indexing to inflation instead of wages).

Nah, tinkering merely saves high income individuals and corporations some tax. If this is, in fact, the deal it is another betrayal of those of us who voted for Obama. This is an issue that will lose my vote.

Don't fuck with social security; that is all.

If Obama starts messing with Social Security to the detriment of recipients (as opposed to increasing taxes on high earners) we baby boomers, who are entering our retirement years, are going to kick his ass.

I voted for Obama and he ain't turning out so great.Better than McCain, but that's not good enough. He's a wuss who is letting the Republicans punk him. Going after social security will make his a one term Presidency.

McCain would have been much better on Social Security -- Obla is from the "privatize SS generation

Means testing Social Security would be a good thing.

Means testing is a shitty idea. The political strength of Social Security is that it is not a welfare program. While there is some mild transfer from people earning under the cap to workers nearer the bottom, the more you earn through your lifetime the better your check. Fundamentally Social Security operates as its title suggests it is Old Age/Survivors and Disability Insurance or OASDI.

The benefit formula and the payroll cap were cleverly designed to maximize the insurance aspect while minimizing transfers. And in particular serve to buffer Social Security from the demands of capital. People who earn all of their income from returns on capital pay nothing into and draw nothing from Social Security. And high wage earners pay relatively little in and wouldn't notice if you means tested them.

Both means testing and cap increases were consciously designed to undermine support for Social Security among the politically important upper reaches of the middle class by moving it towards a welfare model.

Progressives should not let themselves be fooled into thinking that lifting the cap provides more progressive taxation over all. All it does is increase resistance to letting the Bush tax cuts expire.

That faint sound of laughter you hear is from the ultra-wealthy laughing about a cap lift that wouldn't materially effect them at all (most of their income not being exposed to FICA) while serving to suppress support for increases in the top marginal rates.

The combination of means testing, cap increases, and the sunsetting of Bush tax cuts would hammer the upper middle class, they would end up paying taxes at far greater effective rates than the multi-millionaires do,

If you really want to get the professional class in this country hating on the working class you could do not better than moving Social Security from an insurance model to a welfare model.

The payroll cap is our friend. And means testing is not going to hit Bill Gates. The very introduction of his name tells you these people are not serious.

"Obviously, his [Conrad's] incentives are to maximize his own influence"

Why is this even remotely "obvious"? His incentives are (or are supposed to be) to promote the general welfare and provide for the common defence.

When it comes to Social Security, I'm screwed. I worked for peanuts for charities and non-profits through my 30s and 40s and since I can't marry my same-sex partner, I'm not entitled to survivor benefits. That said --
don't fuck with Social Security. I made my choices -- even if they weren't entirely enlightened ones at the time -- but I have no desire to screw over others who have paid in and need that insurance from poverty. Leave it alone.

Any surplus from Social Security each year is taken into the general fund to be spent somewhere else. The Trust Fund is full of worthless IOUs, and the interest due on these IOUs each year is paid for by adding more worthless IOUs to the Fund. So, how do you get any money out of that? It's like having a credit card maxed out, then saying somehow that there is a scheme to spend more money, as the balance on the credit card continues to increase. It's all a bust. What we need to do -- at some point -- is get to a balanced annual budget that includes the SS surplus being deposited somewhere as REAL money. As a REAL payback. Tweeking SS would only add/subtract to the annual SS surplus/deficit. This would not really be meaningful, from what I can see.

A ha ,I agree with you.It's just going to be awful, terrible, and absolutely dreadful to possibly have a Supreme Court justice who isn't going to decide in favor of the powerful all the time.Nobody ever mentions this when they use this case as a parable of liberal excesses, but when the city threw out the results of that test and didn't promote anyone, what did they do next? The case was in litigation for years, they could hardly abolish their whole org chart while it was pending. Did they have a new test, and if so, who passed it?

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