Comments on: If You Like Social Insurance So Much, Then How Come You're Against It?

By: hypothecaire lening

hypothecaire lening — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:51:39 +0000

i agree with tiberiu84… payroll services reduces the work a lot…

By: tiberiu84

tiberiu84 — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:44:49 +0000

The truth is that we have to improve payroll services and create a better economical environment for young people that are located at the start of their careers.

By: Geoff Dodd

Geoff Dodd — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:52:45 +0000

Yes Will (Barry) there are some very real contradictions and wool-pulling-over-eyes with ‘old age insurance’ which doesn’t resemble insurance but rather a RETURN of funds to the higher bracket whence it came! I love the notion of: “..some kind of property-like nexus of entitlement between the payroll tax and retirement benefits.” Maybe ‘property’ is the operative word here and wealthier property-’investors’ will get their entitlements back based on prior levels of income and tax.

By: Geoff Dodd

Geoff Dodd — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:52:00 +0000

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 22:00:00 +0000

I think I qualify as a liberal, and I’m certainly a big fan of this sort of system! I never understood why people (especially Democrats) were against “means-testing” social security.

And this is a move that would clearly make social security solvent much more easily than any “privatization” scheme. We could even just start phasing it out now, so that people are guaranteed to the benefits they’ve “earned” up to 2006 or something, and from then on the payoffs decrease for people who are expecting more than a “dignified” level of support, and perhaps they increase for those making less.

By: Hootsbuddy

Hootsbuddy — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 18:49:00 +0000

http://hootsbuddy.blogspot.com/2005/01/individual-security-new-phrase.html

By: monkyboy

monkyboy — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 17:10:00 +0000

And yet…SS provides a third of its recipients with 100% of their income in retirement and another third with the majority of their income….I guess we see what we want to in statistics.

As the chances of any SS “reform” ever passing is about zero, it may be profitable to switch to a new line of work, Will. Unless you are counting on living off of your SS check in retirement…hehe.

By: Gil

Gil — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 16:08:00 +0000

I think left-liberals like Social Security not so much because it efficiently fulfills the purported goal of social insurance, but because they see it as a strong political asset.

It makes many people dependent on the system, and gives them a reason to oppose candidates who want to make changes that might threaten their benefits.

In other words, it makes most people worse off (and this trend increases over time), but they think it makes left-liberal candidates better off. I suppose they believe that this is the path towards doing more good in the long run, but it strains credibility for me.

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 14:46:00 +0000

And so the data on the non-progressivity of Social Security forces the question to those who might wish to make the argument Krybo mentions. Since Social Security is either almost not progressive or regressive on the whole, what conceivable welfare liberal excuse is there?

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 14:43:00 +0000

Brandon, Lifespan has a a good deal to do with it, but not everything. From Harvard's Jeffrey Liebman:

Social Security transfers income from people with low life expectancies to people with high life expectancies, from single workers and from married couples with substantial earnings by the secondary earner to married one-earner couples, and from people who work for more than 35 years to those who concentrate their earnings in 35 or fewer years. Since high-income households tend to have higher life expectancies and receive larger spouse benefits, some of the progressivity of the basic benefit formula is offset.

See here. Coronado, Fullerton, and Glass (NBER Working Paper 7520 - must pay to view) are even less sanguine about the progressivity of SS. They find that it is not just almost non-progressive. They find that it is actually regressive. See also Fullerton and Mast.

By: Brandon Berg

Brandon Berg — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 12:53:00 +0000

Schwartz gestures toward the redistributive function of the program, but . . . there is almost no redistribution! And . . . it isn’t progressive!

How do you figure that? Someone paying less than 10% of the maximum contribution can get about a quarter of the maximum benefits. Is this cancelled out by shorter lifespans among the poor?

By: Krybo Amgine

Krybo Amgine — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 11:57:00 +0000

C’mon Will. You already know the answer to your question. If everyone wasn’t dependent on SS, our lefty friends believe the voters wouldn’t fund the safety net at a level high enough to guarantee the indigent the proper amount of “dignity” that egalitarian dogma dictates.

By: Krybo Amgine

Krybo Amgine — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

By: Brandon Berg

Brandon Berg — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Schwartz gestures toward the redistributive function of the program, but . . . there is almost no redistribution! And . . . it isn’t progressive!

How do you figure that? Someone paying less than 10% of the maximum contribution can get about a quarter of the maximum benefits. Is this cancelled out by shorter lifespans among the poor?

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Brandon, Lifespan has a a good deal to do with it, but not everything. From Harvard's Jeffrey Liebman:

Social Security transfers income from people with low life expectancies to people with high life expectancies, from single workers and from married couples with substantial earnings by the secondary earner to married one-earner couples, and from people who work for more than 35 years to those who concentrate their earnings in 35 or fewer years. Since high-income households tend to have higher life expectancies and receive larger spouse benefits, some of the progressivity of the basic benefit formula is offset.