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In 85 years, Christmas has changed; Gino Piroli; Beaver County Times; December 19, 2010.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject column.
“Why is it that we continue the Bush-era tax cuts with the justification that if we did away with it, it would contribute to a greater loss of jobs? But job losses never seem to be part of the discussion in plans to eliminate present good-paying jobs by selling the state liquor stores or even consider privatizing the Postal Service, which of course would result in sending thousands and thousands of people to the unemployment lines.”
[RWC] Does Mr. Piroli believe increasing tax rates would not result in lost jobs?
As a reminder, “good-paying jobs” is leftyspeak for employees required to belong to a labor union as a condition of employment, whether the jobs are really “good-paying” or not. In any case, why would “selling the state liquor stores … [and] privatizing the Postal Service … result in sending thousands and thousands of people to the unemployment lines?” Are we going to stop sending/receiving mail and drinking alcoholic beverages? In taking this position, Mr. Piroli appears to indicate the private sector can do what the “state liquor stores” and the USPS do with fewer employees.
“The Postal Service is under fire, even though little of its budget comes from government subsidies; its greatest problem is the expanding use of electronic communication.”
[RWC] Mr. Piroli was Aliquippa postmaster from the late 1960s to the late 1980s.
“Remember back to the past administration and the attempt to privatize the Social Security system? Of course that action would have eliminated many more jobs and how disastrous would that have been to the system when the stock market plunged to its lowest numbers in years?”
[RWC] Mr. Piroli knows there was no “attempt to privatize the Social Security system.” The 2005 proposal merely proposed taxpayers have the option to invest a very small portion (4%) of their SS taxes in personal accounts, but still under the oversight and rules of the SS Administration. Democrats themselves proposed and supported personal accounts in the late 1990s. Remember the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), Sen. Hillary Clinton’s immediate predecessor? This was also a recommendation of the bipartisan President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security in 2001.
In any case, even if Mr. Piroli were correct, how would “privatiz[ing] the Social Security system” “eliminate many more jobs?” Is Mr. Piroli talking about employees of the Socialist Security Administration? If so, wouldn’t the private firms need to add employees to handle all their new business?
“The latest issue of the AARP bulletin shows that the Social Security trust fund currently contains about $2.5 trillion and is expected to have $4.3 trillion by 2023, allowing payment of benefits at current rates until 2037.”
[RWC] When will folks like Mr. Piroli keep falsely claiming there’s a “Social Security [or Medicare] trust fund?” As I note below, the alleged SS “trust fund” is the equivalent of a stack of federal government “IOUs” for SS tax revenue already spent by the feds for other programs. I don’t know about his figures, but his alleged “$2.5 trillion,” or whatever it is, is part of the federal government’s current $14 trillion of debt. Does that sound like a trust fund to you?
The claim the alleged SS “trust fund” will have more in it in 2023 (in 2010 dollars) than today appears unlikely given the Social Security Trustees 2010 report mentioned below.
“Hopefully, Congress will put aside its partisan bickering and make efforts to keep the program solvent well beyond those years.”
[RWC] Mr. Piroli wants Congress to “put aside … partisan bickering?” Mr. Piroli has written about this before and doesn’t appear to recognize the “partisan bickering” nature of his own columns.
Medicare and Socialist Security are “pay as you go” income redistribution programs. That is, today’s Medicare and SS taxes pay for the benefits of today’s Medicare and SS benefit recipients. The Medicare and SS taxes he paid were not put into an account to pay for Mr. Piroli’s retirement benefits. The Medicare and SS taxes Mr. Piroli paid were used to pay for people collecting benefits while he was employed. Today’s Medicare and SS taxpayers are paying for Mr. Piroli’s benefits, not Mr. Piroli. This is the very definition of a Ponzi scheme and why both of these programs are in financial trouble. According to the Social Security Trustees in their 2010 report to Congress, SS was to go into deficit (benefits paid exceed SS taxes collected) in 2016, the Disability Insurance portion of SS will be bankrupt in 2018, and the overall SS “trust fund” (the equivalent of a stack of federal government “IOUs” for revenue already spent by the feds for other programs) will be exhausted by 2037. Because of the current recession, news reports indicate SS is already in deficit, a full six years ahead of the 2008 projection. That’s because SS (as well as Medicare) is a Ponzi scheme.
These are income redistribution programs because a person’s SS benefits are only loosely dependent on how much he paid in taxes and Medicare benefits are the same for everyone regardless of how much an individual paid in Medicare taxes.
I cover this in more detail in my critique of a Piroli column of March 21, 2005.
“There are other items of interest in that bulletin about the aging of America. The fastest-growing age group in the country is the 100-plus population; the second-fastest is those over 85. We’re approaching a time when older adults will outnumber children for the first time in history.
“Let me close this article as I did 22 years ago: Have a happy Christmas and, especially, a healthy new year.”
© 2004-2010 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.