Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Paul Taylor Is Full Of Crap

"The math of those programs does not work. Everybody who looks at the demographics knows that those systems are going broke with 15 or 20 years and the longer you wait, the more the burden of the solution is going to fall on the millennials." Actually, the demographics have long been known to the people who designed these programs and were predicted almost perfectly many decades ago. Furthermore, the projected shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare can be met with tax increases on the millennials that are considerably smaller than the tax increases faced by the baby boomers. The key issue is whether we continue to see the upward redistribution of the last three decades or whether the gains from growth are broadly shared. The Social Security Trustees project that average compensation will increase by more than 50 percent over the next three decades. If the wages of typical worker increase in step with the average then it would be difficult to see the generational injustice if their payroll taxes increased by two to three percentage points, especially since this will be needed in order to support their own longer retirements. It is striking that NPR is willing to focus so much more attention on the threat to the living standards of millennials presented by a 2-3 percentage point increase in payroll taxes than the policies that could lead to much or all of the benefits of productivity growth over the next three decades going to those at the top, as has been the case for the last three decades.
And NPR gives him a platform to spew his bilge.
"The math of those programs does not work. Everybody who looks at the demographics knows that those systems are going broke with 15 or 20 years and the longer you wait, the more the burden of the solution is going to fall on the millennials." 
Actually, the demographics have long been known to the people who designed these programs and were predicted almost perfectly many decades ago. Furthermore, the projected shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare can be met with tax increases on the millennials that are considerably smaller than the tax increases faced by the baby boomers. The key issue is whether we continue to see the upward redistribution of the last three decades or whether the gains from growth are broadly shared. The Social Security Trustees project that average compensation will increase by more than 50 percent over the next three decades. If the wages of typical worker increase in step with the average then it would be difficult to see the generational injustice if their payroll taxes increased by two to three percentage points, especially since this will be needed in order to support their own longer retirements. 
It is striking that NPR is willing to focus so much more attention on the threat to the living standards of millennials presented by a 2-3 percentage point increase in payroll taxes than the policies that could lead to much or all of the benefits of productivity growth over the next three decades going to those at the top, as has been the case for the last three decades.


These shills and their backers won't rest until they've stolen the retirement from every man, woman and child in America. 

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