Centerfield

Well, I can't think of anyone I know foolish enough to read "70% of Americans polled think there is a problem with Social Security" and think "70% of Americans think the President's plan for private accounts is a good idea."

However, I tend to have smart friends. It is possible that I (and my friends of my age) had a more liberal edcuation than most, but I was tought in school to be very critical (not suspicious, critical) of the news for this very reason, and to get my news from multiple sources.

Nevertheless, you're right. Apparently straightforward media reports can be garbage a lot of the time. I mean, just look back to that post yesterday about how "73 percent of the stories on Fox News included the opinions of the anchors and journalists reporting them"

The real lesson is the public needs to be more "media savvy," as my high school teacher called it.

Art...

Nobody is making the logical leap you suggest is foolish. They are reading that 56% of those polled in the SAME POLL where the 70% figure came from supported "a plan in which people who chose to could invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market", and concluding that, therefore, 56% of the people believe that the President's plan for private accounts is a good idea. This is the opposite from foolish, since the sum total of the President's plan thus far is to allow workers to choose between standard traditional social security or investing some portion of their payroll taxes in the stock market. Am I missing something?

To me, this illustrates the danger we face of making policy decisions by polls. Even when the pollster is unbiased and trying hard to ask questions neutrally, the answers (obviously, from this example) can be inconsistent with each other.

As Tully has previously pointed out, the dangers of media bias come not just from the slanting of individual stories (e.g., the choice to label Republicans as "conservative" while leaving Democrats unlabelled), but also from story selection, the choice to report only bad news, but not good news. For example, if I'm a news producer and wish to portray a negative outlook on the Iraq war, I don't have to be so crude as to say so explicitly in the stories. Instead, I can just choose to only run stories about insurgent attacks and civilian deaths, but never run stories about new schools being built, women walking the streets freely and voting, etc. Much as with Sherlock Holmes' curious incident of the dog in the night-time, the bias may be shown by what is not reported.

So you are correct, we must all be more savvy, and understand that things are rarely as bad as the critics make them out to be, and rarely as good as the proponent makes them out to be.

The polls (if you can believe them) already indicate that the American public mistrusts the media.

I, for one, don't really care what the trends are in polls like the WaPo one referenced in Tully's post. My own concern has been that a serious discussion concerning Social Security is past overdue.

Separately, I would be the first to warn against misunderestimating this president.

Regarding polls and the media, I do not recall the exact numbers but there is a percentage of Americans who believe we found WMDs in Iraq. And the corollation between that belief and FoxNews viewers was also documented.

Please note how we're not discussing reforming social security anymore but debating polls. Unfortunately SS reform is dead for now. AS I've said before we're in the "what does the public really want" phase to justify our judgement as to whether its dead and early in the "who's fault is it" phase. My nominations for two roots causes. 1) Combo of "Not if Bush wants its" knee-jerk opposition and over-hyping the need (i.e. the "C" word) 2) too much heavy lifting especially since, as Greenspan reinforced yesterday, its a combo of two changes: raising taxes and lowering benefits.

Oh well, my kids are bright. They can figure it out.

It's very true that in the absence of many details about Bush's plan, the breach has been filled with opportunistic rhetoric (by both sides) attempting to frame the issue.

The only "details" of Bush's plan that he seems to have acknowledged are these:

-if you are over 55, you'll get all you've been promised
(which suggested that if you are

-he wants to integrate some form of private investment into the system, and he'd like to start by allowing younger workers (undefined? under 30? what) to contribute 2% of earnings (roughly a third of their total contribution) into an investment account of some type (probably one with options constrained based on risk level)

If I have a worry, it's that Bush admin and GOP implements only the easy or the one-sided fix, like with the presciption drug plan and the bankruptcy bill. Whatever we do needs to address all points realistically, so that we can all make future plans based on a stable program.

Leaving aside Bush, ANY president trying to reform SS is likely to work with a large team and spend substantial time thinking about how to get the ball rolling, and it seems pretty obvious that the plan is to first convince people that change is necessary. A monkey could figure out this part. The fact that it's happening is made obvious by the initial democratic insistence that "there is no crisis."

Polls about this are going to vary fairly widely based on how the poll questions are prefaced, and how they are asked. But all these polls and battles are part of the educational process of trying to get people to care and understand. For my part, I know I've been trying to get people (both online and offline) to catch hold of the idea that, even if SS as a program may be "solvent" until 2040, it begins being an immediate burden to the government as soon as the government needs to borrow or tax more in order to provide the extra dollars to pay for SS once the amount collected is less than the amount paid out.

I'm still astionished at the resistance to understanding this, and the denial that it's a problem. I am further stunned by attempts to make a distinction between a problem and a crisis. IMO, the bottom line is that the sooner we do something, the better. Whatever reformed system we come up with, it simply MUST be sustainable based on numbers of dollars collected, and any changes to collect additional revenue for the plan must be of a scope reasonable enough not to place a huge drag on the economy,

EG -

I'm glad you bring those polls up, as they are a prime example of bias shown by what is asked and what is not.

The only questions that poll asked were question designed to "get" Bush supporters. They did not ask questions like: "Did France and Germany oppose the war because they did not believe WMD existed in Iraq?" or "There is no evidence that Saddam was trying to rebuild his WMD capabilities." or "Saddam had convinced his own army that he had WMD."

Polling on those questions might reveal similarly erroneous beliefs by those on the left... but they were never asked.

Besides which, they have found WMD in Iraq. They just haven't found large and recent stockpiles of them.

Mayflower Compact Coalition (Wangstas Fo' Shizzle My Nizzle)...

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman today attended the unveiling of the 21st Century Mayflower Compact at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C.. The nine-point agenda includes support for school choice and private social security accounts. The Coalition is advised in part by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s consulting firm.

African Americans often reach different and surprising conclusions on social issues that the casual (Caucasian) observer just won’t understand. For example, Black folks still want to see Michael Jackson find happiness. His high-pitched voice and soulful delivery is the soundtrack of generations and has a permanent place in the Black community’s psyche, no matter the plastic surgery, skin bleaching and alleged child molestation charges. Possibly, it’s the “he’s still Black” phenomenon that African Americans well understand. They want Michael Jackson’s name cleared. In short, they want him to make good music and just leave the damn kids alone.

Likewise, Blacks see Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance Program, popularly known as Social Security, as an entitlement forced into place during a period when “bigots” wanted to run things. And against the odds, a well respected Franklin Roosevelt was able to established needed protection for the public from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment. As its original name suggest, African Americans believe the insurance program was created to do much more than provide an old age benefit.

Wangstas (whites and uh oh oreos) are extremely white persons who attempt to be “gangsta” (cool with Black people) in order to “pimp out.” They dress, speak and act for all practical purposes as a African Americans aside from the fact that they are not. Normally they are hated by the fam for being fake.

The White House and its oreos who support overhauling Social Security have launched a highly targeted campaign to convince Black people that President Bush’s plan to create private investment accounts will have special benefits for them. The ghetto fab element about the GOP message to African Americans: “The shorter life expectancy of Black males means Social Security in its current form is not a favorable deal.”

Proponents of privatizing social security who claim no group has as much at stake in the debate over reform as African Americans, in fact, are right. Black families of workers who become disabled or die are much more likely than their Caucasian counterparts to be dependent on the grip available from disability and/or survivor benefits. Blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, but 23 percent of African American children receive survivor benefits, and 18 percent of the community are disability beneficiaries.

Although the wangstas are making a special effort to appeal to the strizzeet with the 21st Century Mayflower Compact, the “lower life expectancies” illusion appears to reached every one except the African American senior. Their attempt to focus on a very narrow element of the system (current program based on longevity is unfair) is misplaced and doesn’t gain cool points. What the oreos fail to realize is their attempt to be “down” for da brothas... is just “gosh-darn” obnoxious (using their vernacular) and another clue identifying the new face of segregation.

“A’ight?”

Social Security is an insurance program that protects workers and their families against the income loss that occurs when a worker retires, becomes disabled, or dies. All workers will eventually either grow too old to compete in the labor market, become disabled, or die. President Roosevelt created the program to insure all workers and their families against these universal risks, while spreading the costs and benefits of that insurance protection among the entire workforce.

It is a “pay as you go” program, which means the Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) payroll tax paid by today’s workers are not set aside to pay their own benefits down the road, but rather go to pay the benefits of current recipients. The tax isn’t progressive. The low-wage workers receive a greater percentage of pre-retirement earnings from the program than higher-wage workers. And, in the 1980's, Congress passed reforms to raise extra tax revenues above and beyond the current need and set up a trust fund to hold a reserve.

As was the case when the program was established, higher-wage workers still oppose the social nature of the program. They argue low rates of return as a reason to switch from the current “pay-as-you-go” system to one in which individual workers claim their own contribution and decide where and how to invest it. In short, rather than sharing the risk across the entire workforce to ensure that all workers and their families are protected from old age, disability, and death, higher-wage workers want to enable opportunity to reap gains from private investment without having to help protect lower-wage workers from their disproportionate risks.

Allowing high-wage workers (who are more likely to live long enough to retire) opportunity to opt out of the general risk pool and devote all their money to retirement without having to cover the risk of those who may become disabled or die, is da fo’ shizzle identifying the republican party’s desire to return to a segregated society.

Roosevelt’s benefit formula currently in place intentionally helps low income earners. Lifetime earnings directly factor into the formula. And, thirty-five percent of Black workers born between 1931 and 1940 had lifetime earnings that fell into the bottom fifth of earnings received by workers born in these years. African Americans’ median earnings (working-age in jobs covered by Social Security in 2002) were about $21,200, compared to $28,400 for all working-age people.

HNIC, president Bush, does acknowledge the difficulty Blacks will have in accumulating enough savings in their individual accounts to provide for a secure retirement once the progressivity of the current system is eliminated. However, he has only suggested allowing lower-income workers to place higher portions of their income into the uncertainties of investment accounts (creating even more risk).

Yes! Private accounts would be passed on to children or other heirs. But, what the HNIC and his oreos doesn’t explain is lower-income workers would be forced to buy an annuity large enough (when combined with their traditional Social Security benefit) to ensure that they would at least have a poverty level income for retirement.

Yo’ playa... da new private social security account fizzle sucks!