Comments for Robert Samuelson Is Too Lazy to Look Up Income Data for the Elderly at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 11 out of 11 comments http://www.cepr.net Sun, 26 May 2013 04:02:48 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8988 And the real agenda is that taxes on the rich must be cut more. All hail our Galtian Overlords. - Sherparick Tue, 17 May 2011 03:15:27 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8978 A few months ago, in a similar vein, Samuelson did a takedown on public education, arguing that math and reading scores had not improved much over an approximate 20-year period. The table that he used as a reference showed that, overall, average scores remained the same; however, he neglected to point out that the same tables showed significant gains for Black and Hispanic students. Of course the overall scoring average would not have changed much due to the increased number of minorities measured in the table--a group that had started out significantly behind the white population's scores. Sammy chose to ignore the positive news in order to beat up public schools with data that was essentially meaningless. I don't think the guy knows a whole lot about anything. - jhand Mon, 16 May 2011 12:34:00 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8977 means many things. Income taxwise it would be administratively free but also raise next to nothing. A more complex approach has to take into account wealth as well as income and would be extremely taxing. Another approach some have suggested is reducing it in proportion to lifetime earning above some threshold which SSA already tracks rather than income or wealth. This would not be administratively costly but it may not save much either. It would be more fair to those who saved on their own though. - Lord Mon, 16 May 2011 11:26:19 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8970 "It's not clear why Samuelson thinks it is appropriate to compare their poverty rate to that of children." The reason is obvious. There's a standard right-wing form of argument - these are like pattern arguments, adabtable for various circumstances - which goes something like this: 1) the left has identified social problem A and wants the government to do something about it. 2) But social problem B is a much more serious problem! and we're not doing anything about B! 3) Therefore we should not do anything about A. You can spin this argument out in greater detail by adding charges of hypocrisy or fecklessness(e.g., saying you want to fix A while B is staring you in the face is the height of fiscal irresponsibility! Much better to do nothing about A and B, both!) Here, Samuelson is making a sketch of the argument, but actually in a stronger form, something like this: 1) We have solved the social problem of old age poverty! 2) Indeed, we have done such a good job with old age poverty that child poverty is now a more serious social problem. 3) Therefore, we should take steps so that old age poverty will once again be as serious as child poverty. - Bloix Mon, 16 May 2011 06:40:02 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8969 jm, Social security benefits are not proportional to taxes, they are skewed against higher incomes. See [url]http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/COLA/piaformula.html[/url] "PIA will be the sum of: (a) 90 percent of the first $749 of his/her average indexed monthly earnings, plus (b) 32 percent of his/her average indexed monthly earnings over $749 and through $4,517, plus (c) 15 percent of his/her average indexed monthly earnings over $4,517." Full taxation of social security benefits is administratively cost-free, as progressive as the income tax, and won't substantially affect those who rely on social security for all of their income. Dean's paper assumes that implementing "means testing" will cost as much as evaluating disabilities: "Currently, administrative costs for Social Security are very low, just over 0.6 percent of the benefits paid out each year for the retirement portion of the program. Administering a means test would raise these costs substantially. By comparison, the administrative costs of the disability portion of the program, which requires extensive review of applicants’ eligibility, are equal to 2.3 percent of the program’s benefits payments. [b]If the cost of administering a means test for the retirement program raised its expense ratio to the same level as the disability program,[/b] then it would eliminate most and possibly all of the savings from a means test applied to affluent elderly." Dean, why would changing the tax code result in 2.3% administrative costs? - AndrewDover Mon, 16 May 2011 06:31:35 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8968 The real agenda behind means-testing is to turn Social Security into something that can be called a welfare program, rather than the insurance program it is today. With Social Security reconfigured as a "welfare program" in which the poor get a huge payoff while the middle class gets back an even smaller fraction of what it paid in, they will be able to demonize as they have all welfare programs. Then they can kill it. Today, everyone pays in, and everyone gets back an amount proportional to what they paid in, plus some interest. Means-testing is just another divide-and-conquer strategy by the far right. - jm Mon, 16 May 2011 05:50:04 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8967 Samuelson is not just lazy, he is disingenuous. This from an NBER review [url]http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/summer04/w10466.html[/url] of NBER Working Paper 10466[url]http://www.nber.org/papers/w10466[/url] by researchers Gary Engelhardt and Jonathan Gruber: "The authors draw several interesting conclusions from their analysis of aggregate trends. First, when poverty is measured relative to median non-elderly income rather than relative to the official poverty line, [b]the decline in elderly poverty ended in the early 1980s.[/b] Income inequality has increased markedly since then among the elderly and non-elderly alike. Second, poverty rates are strongly cyclical - rising during recessions and falling during economic expansions - for the non-elderly but not for the elderly, highlighting the protective effect of Social Security. Third, decreases in elderly poverty over time have been similar across age groups but larger for married couples than for other groups." - Larry Signor Mon, 16 May 2011 05:17:24 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8962 Blue-collar workers are not doing better now than they ever did - their real income hit a peak around 1973: http://www.skeptometrics.org/WeeklyWages/WeeklyWages.htm Wages have increased since around 1990, but are still nowhere near what they were 40 years ago. Wages had grown steadily for 100 years before the 1960's and 1970's. The drastic change at that time is one of the central facts of modern economics. The timing of this change is brought even more clearly by comparing wages with GDP and corporate profits: http://www.skeptometrics.org/Prof_Wages_by_GDP.png This change was not brought about by Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. Shouldn't economists give some thought to the the cause of this reversal? - skeptonomist Mon, 16 May 2011 03:45:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8961 ...per capita income has doubled since 1980... I thought wages have been stagnant for that long. What has been the rate of decline in the value of the dollar and the rate of inflation? - par4 Mon, 16 May 2011 03:26:00 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8958 Imagine getting dumped on like that, when all you are really tryin' to do is make sure nobody starts means-testing the rich! Happy days. - JHM Mon, 16 May 2011 01:00:50 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/robert-samuelson-is-too-lazy-to-look-up-income-data-for-the-elderly#comment-8956 [quote]It's not clear why Samuelson thinks it is appropriate to compare their poverty rate to that of children.[/quote] Baker fails to grasp the insight of Samuelson which reaches beyond economics into fairness and equity issues. Children serve as an appropriate benchmark for distribution gains or losses over time because their life is in front of them and therefore controllable in terms of avoidable cost. The life of the elderly is long gone as a sunk cost so changes in their welfare over time doesn't really matter since there's nothing to gain or lose anyway. Samuelson has more courage than most reporters on this issue to avoid the obvious bias. To use the elderly as a benchmark instead would obviously cause children to appear much better off than they really are. - izzatzo Mon, 16 May 2011 00:35:44 +0100