The lies surrounding our benefits programs

From the Political Carnival

The five biggest lies about "entitlement" (ahem, earned benefits) programs
from The Political Carnival by GottaLaff

My Twitter pal Michael Hiltzik does it again. In his newest L.A. Times column, he dissects the five biggest lies about Social Security and Medicare, pointing out that the truth seems to elude far too many people who have big microphones.

Hiltzik first states a fact that everyone should know, but right wing talking points have obliterated: that the very word "entitlement" is a lie, saying "Social Security and Medicare got that name because workers became 'entitled' to those benefits by paying into the system. In recent years, however, the term has become distorted to signify benefits people are entitled to without earning them."

Glad we got that out of the way, because it drives me nuts.

Now on to the lies. He begins with the January 1 change in the Social Security payroll tax, which lowered the average household income by about $80 a month. Lie No. 1: The payroll tax hike is killing the retail economy:

    Blaming the payroll tax, however, ignores the whole story. First, on Jan. 1 the tax wasn't hiked; it was restored to its 2010 level, after a two-year "holiday"… But the holiday was always a wretched idea, in part because of what everyone knew would happen when the old rate reappeared -people treated it as a pay cut…. The payroll tax break, by contrast, went only to those who pay into Social Security. So it left out 5.7 million state and local workers (mostly teachers).

Then on to the second whopper, Lie No. 2: "Entitlement" benefits for millionaires and billionaires are a costly problem:

    The lie here is the assertion that a significant portion of benefits goes to multimillionaires. In fact, their share of benefits is minuscule. That's because there aren't very many of them, and they don't get more than the maximum old-age benefit… They account for about 14 hundredths of one percent of all Social Security outlays.

Lie No. 3: Social Security and Medicare are $60 trillion in the hole:

    It's a calculation of funding gaps projected out to the limitless future and then converted to present value - meaning what the cost would be if we had to pay it all today.

Lie No. 4: You're paying too much (or too little) for your benefits:

    This is a double-barreled lie, based on the misconception that Social Security and Medicare are retirement funds. They're not; they're insurance programs. What you recover depends on your personal circumstances, but the point is they're there when you need them.

Lie No. 5: Medicare, Social Security - it's all the same:

    It's misleading to lump these two programs together as if they have the same issues amenable to the same solutions.