Social Security numbers and the dead

In the last 30 days, my Facebook account was hacked and a relative’s credit card number was stolen. Meanwhile Google has revamped its privacy policy in an attempt to learn where falls every toenail we clip. So our fair government decides the privacy that’s important to protect is that of dead people’s Social Security numbers: [...]

Social Security’s shrinking trust fund – so what?

No surprise: The Social Security headache is one of the SOA’s top retirement stories of 2011: When it was created in 1935, the fundamental principle behind Social Security was that the feds would take a few dollars from everyone’s paycheck, promising to pay it back once you reached retirement age – a “forced” retirement savings [...]

The future of Social Security in one graph

Via Ezra Klein, this chart shows how the various Social Security proposals would reduce benefits (adjusted for inflation) for a family of modest ($40K) earnings. You may have to click on it to make it large enough to read. The most famous plans are the burgundy line (Congress does nothing), the green line’s Bowles-Simpson proposal [...]

AAA’s Social Security spin grows

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget swallows AAA’s line about a cut in Social Security benefits not being a benefit cut. I wrote about it here. The committee got AAA’s obfuscation and passes it along heartily: So when the American Academy of Actuaries sent a letter to the Commission arguing for raising the retirement [...]

More Social Security myths

Without going into the pros and cons of raising the retirement age, I would like to take a shot at a couple of misconceptions that enter the debate. First, an easy one. Headlines like these: Obama on Social Security: Raise Retirement Age or Cut Social Security Benefits? Uh, raising the retirement age is a cut [...]

Social Security redux: a wake-up call

I’m never too tired, though, to rail about lines like this one, from the AP writethrough on Social Security finances: …….The trust fund, which exists in paper form in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W.Va., are bonds backed by the government’s “full faith and credit” but not by any actual assets. That trust fund, currently [...]

The Medicare actuary’s parallel report

Regarding today’s Medicare trustee report, Bloomberg adds: [Social Security and Medicare Chief Actuary Richard] Foster’s office issued a parallel report today, separate from the one written by the trustees. It said the projections in the trustees’ report “do not represent the ‘best estimate’ of actual future Medicare expenditures,” the actuaries wrote in their separate report. [...]

Medicare, Social Security trustees’ reports released

Summary here. Basically, according to the report, it’s Obamacare to the rescue, though all the programs – Social Security, Medicare, and Disability Insurance – need more help. Highlights: Longer term, Medicare funding is better off, thanks to Obamacare. Caveat: the improvement…….. …….. is premised on the assumption that productivity growth in the health care sector [...]

Social Security actuary in rift with boss

Great quote Sunday from the always discreet New York Times, discussing a rift between Social Security’s chief actuary, Stephen C. Goss, and his boss, Michael J. Astrue: Actuaries often run into difficulty because they can deliver an unwelcome analysis that carries great weight. Well, ain’t that the truth? However, says the Times, the current row [...]