(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Opinion | How Not to Panic About Social Security [1]
['Paul Krugman']
Date: 2023-02-28
“The days of our years are threescore and ten,” says Psalm 90 in the King James Bible. So right now I’m about to [keels over].
OK, actually, I’m feeling fine, and because both high education and high income are strongly correlated with life expectancy (more on that in a minute) I could easily be looking at two decades or more ahead, although obviously nothing is guaranteed. But one thing will change: Since there’s no longer any payoff to a delay, I’m about to start receiving Social Security payments.
Which, along with the fact that Social Security and Medicare are in the news, makes this seem like a good occasion to write about some common misconceptions about the program, mostly on the right but to some extent also on the left.
The thing about Social Security is that from the beginning it was designed to encourage misconceptions. It looks, on casual inspection, like a giant version of a private pension plan. You pay into such a plan during your working years, contributing to a pension fund, and when you retire, you receive payments from that fund in proportion to the amount you put in.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/opinion/social-security-retirement-age.html
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
