Heterodox
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday accused President Donald Trump of breaking his repeated 2016 campaign promise to protect Social Security from cuts, pointing to a proposed rule change that could terminate disability benefits for hundreds of thousands of low-income and vulnerable people. "Trump said he wouldn't cut Social Security. He lied," tweeted Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. "He is working to stop Americans from getting the benefits they paid for and need."... Is SS...
Read More »Larry Kotlikoff’s Social Security editorial in “The Hill”
by Dale Coberly KOTLICOFF ON THE HILL with Social Security Larry Kotlikoff wrote an editorial that appeared May 14 in “The Hill:” https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/443465-social-security-just-ran-a-9-trillion-deficit-and-nobody-noticed He cried, “Wolf! Wolf! Social Security ran a 9 Trillion Dollar Deficit last year and nobody noticed!” He went on to explain this was the increase in the “infinite horizon Present Value of the Unfunded Deficit” from...
Read More »Nancy MacLean on constitutional economics and the conservative movement
[embedded content] Author of a great book on James Buchanan, that is certainly worth reading. The whole thing is related to Buchanan's constitutional economics and how it underpins the Koch's strategy to take over the country (and Pence is their guy, btw). The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that has been so influential in the far- right conservative movement take over of US politics at the State and local level (see this old piece in The Atlantic, or this in The Nation) has a...
Read More »Newsday Editorial Board — First shots in war on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security
Poverty is not a scam. Neither is old age or infirmity or serious illness. But making poverty and the need for help look like a scam is a common political strategy, and it’s one President Donald Trump’s administration sought to rekindle last week when it allowed states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients in “test” programs. Such a change, based on fiction about who the 70 million Medicaid recipients are and how almost $550 billion in state and federal Medicaid funding is...
Read More »How to kill Social Security in 2 easy steps
How to kill Social Security in 2 easy steps Here’s Kevin Drum advocating for step 1: the best way to address retirement security is to continue reforming 401(k) plans and to expand Social Security—but only for low-income workers. Middle-class workers are generally doing reasonably well, and certainly as well as they did in the past. We don’t need a massive and expensive expansion of Social Security for everyone, but we do need to make Social Security...
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