Comments for National Public Radio Redoubles the Effort to Cut Your Social Security and Medicare at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://www.cepr.net Fri, 24 May 2013 02:40:40 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/national-public-radio-redoubles-the-effort-to-cut-your-social-security-and-medicare#comment-10759 A few days ago NPR's Steve Inskeep interviewed Barney Frank on the budget problems. Among other points, Frank stated the truth about SS - that it was fully funded for decades and did not add one cent to the deficit. But Inskeep ignored him and kept interrupting with the battle cry "entitlements, entitlements, entitlements!" Then he said that he had to end the interview. Frank barely got in the statement that he couldn't explain complicated matters in five seconds. NPR is a disgrace. They are so worried that right-wing fanatics will cut their funding that they constantly repeat the lies of the conservatives and treat their ringleaders as rational people. And when the "sort of/kind of" count gets as high as it has been at NPR for many years, it is time to draft every one of them for immediate deployment to Afghanistan. Maybe then we can get that old song out of our heads, "Masculine women, feminine men, who is the rooster, who is the hen?" - George Fleming Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:21:03 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/national-public-radio-redoubles-the-effort-to-cut-your-social-security-and-medicare#comment-10664 Is there anywhere I can read how he did his calculation, so I can understand it? What are the assumptions, what is the technique? Thanks. - Jan Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:56:52 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/national-public-radio-redoubles-the-effort-to-cut-your-social-security-and-medicare#comment-10623 This morning either NPR or Marketplace talked about the importance of "certainty" to businesses---about how much they like to know what's happening, want stability so they can plan around their expectations, etc. And it was very convincing and I agreed with them. But no connection was made about how ordinary people also value stability and certainty in our own lives. Most of us who are lucky enough to still have jobs earn weak retirement benefits from our employment and will likely rely almost entirely on Social Security. But we pay into volatile 401k accounts (presented as good investments) that will likely not go the distance in providing adequate retirement income---and most don't even realize it. But the news hardly mentions the high risks/low yields from poorly designed, unreliable 401k's. Instead we are told all the time about the fragility of Social Security and we mostly get happy talk about 401k's when reality is more likely the reverse---SS is better run, more accountable, and more reliable than our employer-based retirement accounts. So individually we face tremendous uncertainty about hugely important parts of our lives but on that issue the official concern is about whether or not businesses can feel good about the reliability of their own assumptions. Most of us have no certainty about our retirement benefits or about the durability of our health insurance, even if we are lucky enough to have some. So for most it's almost better to just not think about it, and that is how many ordinary people cope with those uncertainties. It's as if the fear-mongering about SS is actually intended to keep us from noticing the poor quality of our employer-provided health & retirement benefits. The discussion about certainty being good for businesses might have been in this story but there was a woman's voice so maybe it was another one: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/08/10/am-fed-announcement-implies-economic-slow-growth-until-2013/ - MB Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:27:01 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/national-public-radio-redoubles-the-effort-to-cut-your-social-security-and-medicare#comment-10615 I f only NPR knew that Social SECURITY was created by the Government out of the scary darkness of the financial collapse, of the 1930's; and, a short two years, following the enactment of Glass-Steagall, which protected the scary Banks from themselves. Social Security then worked just fine for 75 years, independent of the viscitudes of Government budgets. Now, twelve years after Gramm-Leach removed the safegards of Glass-Steagall, allowing the sociopaths of finance to wreck the world economy, and subsequently aggravate public and priv ate debt worldwide, NPR is terrorizing its listeners toward sacrificing the Social Security they pay for inorder to cover scary ill-defined "debt" which Social Security doesn't contribute to. NPR should know not to believe scary stories you hear on the the radio, like Orson Well's 1938 "War of the Worlds. - Union Member Wed, 10 Aug 2011 07:14:29 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/national-public-radio-redoubles-the-effort-to-cut-your-social-security-and-medicare#comment-10610 I must disagree with your statement that this was an "example of cesspool journalism that would even embarrass Fox News". It would not, sir. - Jim In Panama Wed, 10 Aug 2011 05:20:52 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/national-public-radio-redoubles-the-effort-to-cut-your-social-security-and-medicare#comment-10609 Kotlikoff apparently uses figures like the $211T as a rhetorical device. One of his positions is that deficits and debt are arbitrary constructions, which actually makes some sense (what does it mean if the U.S. owes $10T to its own citizens?). His real message obviously went over the heads of the NPR writers who just jumped on the number. - skeptonomist Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:51:04 +0100