20111031

From a "liberal" rag

Yesterday's Social Security article in the Washington Post is really torquing me. It isn't false, but the premise of the article is misleading, at best. It's kind of funny, in a way, because WaPo is frequently painted as a bastion of unabashed liberalism, but this article was all in service to the conservative agenda of cutting Social Security.

The truth: Social Security is in the red, has been for the last couple of years, and will be for, probably, a couple more years. It is also true that it going into the red is due to the recession. And Social Security, without changes, will cause serious budgetary problems in a bit more than 25 years. Of course, Medicare/Medicaid will cause much more serious problems well before then.

Anyway, to get back to the issue at hand, the premise of the article is that Social Security benefits must be cut in order to put the budget back in balance, and the AARP is making that politically impossible.

Why that is misleading: the reason that the recession pushed SS into the red is that too many older people lost their jobs unexpectedly, and started collecting benefits earlier than they would have. Now, because they are collecting earlier, their monthly benefit is smaller. Because of this, over the long term, they will collect the same amount of benefits (on average, at least). So, while it is causing some short-term pain, the change will add just as much back over the lifespan of those who retired early.

I must admit that I shouldn't, but I expect better from the Washington Post.

But yet another example of why "the liberal media" is a myth (perhaps with some factual basis in the past; I'm not sure, but it certainly is not true now, when all the media is owned by very large corporations).

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