Bush Lies To Blacks
The GOP is playing the race card on Social Security, writes Farhad Manjoo on Salon (short but irritating commercial must be screened to read story), pushing the old lie that blacks collect fewer Social Security benefits because they don't live as long as whites:
Here's the trouble with the emotional, race-based appeal: It has no basis in fact. Or, as Dean Baker, co-director of the left-leaning think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research, puts it, "It's wrong in just about every single respect."To begin with, there is no evidence that blacks, as a group, are cheated by Social Security. Yes, whites do live longer than blacks, which means that the average white woman will collect more benefit checks than the average black man. But, Baker points out, blacks also generally make less money than whites, which means that they get a higher rate of return on their contributions to the system. And because African-Americans suffer higher rates of disability than whites, they draw more from Social Security's disability benefits than whites. Meanwhile, spouses and minor children of African-Americans heavily depend on the system's survivor benefits. When economists have studied all that blacks put into the system compared with all they get out of it, Baker says, blacks, as a group, aren't being treated unfairly -- and they may even be doing better than whites.
Anti-Social Security agitators such as Stephen Moore, who heads the Free Enterprise Fund, have taken to calling Social Security a "massive income redistribution program" that sucks money out of African-Americans' pockets and spits it out to whites. But in truth, says Hillary Shelton of the NAACP, African-Americans would be absolutely destitute without Social Security. "African-American children are almost four times as likely to be lifted out of poverty by Social Security benefits than our white counterparts," Shelton says.
In a Social Security briefing paper, Shelton declares that "almost 80 percent of African Americans over age 65 depend on Social Security for more than half of their income, and more than half rely on it for 90 percent or more of their income." Basically, he writes, "without the guaranteed Social Security benefits they receive today, the poverty rate among older African Americans would more than double, pushing most African American seniors into squalor and poverty during their most vulnerable years."
But the main problem with the Republicans' argument that private accounts would be better for blacks than the current system is not that it's economically wrong. It's that it's gravely pessimistic. As the president took pains to point out in his State of the Union address, Social Security reform won't affect today's generation of retirees; it will benefit today's young people, who will retire 30 or 40 years from now. By that reasoning, conservatives are conceding that blacks will die young not only now but 40 years from now. Apparently, they aren't concerned about working to ensure that young African-Americans live as long and healthy lives as today's young white people.
The conservative argument, Baker points out, is based on the idea that inequality is persistent. But why should we accept that it is? According to national mortality statistics (PDF), African-Americans suffer a higher death rate than whites for a number of plausibly preventable causes -- AIDS and homicide, for instance. Innumerable such inequalities are responsible for blacks' shorter lives. "Maybe those inequalities won't disappear over the next 40 or so years," Baker says. "But can't we assume that they will get smaller and smaller?"
It's pretty scary that they can't sell this on the facts, and instead resort to Anne Coulter-style facts. If you remove Social Security as is, and let people manage their accounts, who takes care of them if they make bad investments and have nothing when they're 80? Are we going to have a massive public dole, complete with warehouse/poorhouses for the elderly, or are we just going to leave them out on the curb to starve? Then again, maybe Mr. Bush is so convinced "The Rapture" is upon us that he feels it's silly to worry about such things. (Don't pooh-pooh it so fast. We've got a fundamentalist puppet of other fundamentalists in The White House. There is actually a pretty good chance that he's running our economic system on the belief that "believers" will be airlifted to heaven in their jammies, and screw the rest of the heathens!) Modernity anyone? Rationality anyone? Remember I asked when you're 98 and scrimping to afford cat food, and not for the cat, either.
the way bush and friends are robbing the poor to give to the rich, maybe they're thinking they will ascend to heaven with their pockets full of money.
david at February 4, 2005 5:28 PM
Women live an average of 6-7 years longer than men, and draw out a whole lot more SS than they put in. If anybody's getting screwed under the current system, it's men.
Richard Bennett at February 4, 2005 7:32 PM
"But the main problem with the Republicans' argument that private accounts would be better for blacks than the current system is not that it's economically wrong. It's that it's gravely pessimistic."
Pessimistic? How about OBSCENE? It is unbelievable that anyone would suggest that we reform public policy to accommodate racial/ethnic disparities in longevity, rather than target and eliminate those disparities. That liberals are taking this inane and offensive argument seriously (thereby validating it) is evidence of the brain rot caused after too many years inside the Beltway.
I'd laugh if I weren't horrified. Somebody slap me, please.
Lena needs a mental health day at February 4, 2005 7:47 PM
“In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, ‘Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age,’ adding that government funding, ‘ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.’”
Bummer, dude.
Richard Bennett at February 4, 2005 10:09 PM
This will probably surprise you all, given my reputation for being a child-loathing bitch (with about eight exceptions at the moment), but women should receive a salary from the partner they agree to have a child with -- not be allowed to force men into parenthood off some one-night stand -- but be compensated and even given a pension for staying home with the kids.
That said, if I get pregnant, which I won't (and no cracks about how I'm getting on in years), watch how fast I run for the RU-486. Some people buy crack on the black market...naw, on second thought, it's a great excuse to go to France!
Amy Alkon at February 5, 2005 2:27 AM
Richard, aren't you way over your dropping in once a month because it's so damn atheistic again quota?
Amy Alkon at February 5, 2005 2:30 AM
Yes, I am. The stupidity of your last comment was so breathtaking that your blog is getting a train-wreck quality.
BTW, I didn't complain about atheism (I am pretty much an athest myself), I complained about your obsession with religion. People like you are the ones who become born-agains, and we've got a pool going on your ETA to Jesus.
Richard Bennett at February 5, 2005 3:18 AM
Just to bring this back....
The system to emulate in the US is the Chilean system.
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/progdesc/ssptw/1999/chile.htm
Highlights:
1. Contributions: Minimum for old-age pension, 10% of wage or salary; for survivor and disability pension and administrative fees, about 3% of wage or salary, depending on the pension fund management company (AFP) chosen. All of this goes into *individual* accounts.
2. Benefits and Timing: Receive old-age pension: Age 65 (men) and 60 (women). 20 years of contribution to receive minimum benefit. Retirement permitted before normal retirement age if pension equals at least 50% of average wage over last 10 years and is at least equal to 110% of minimum old-age pension.
3. Payouts: Old-age pension: Individual's contributions plus accrued interest, less administrative fees. Value of individual's contributions under the public system provided as indexed bond. *Minimum pension guaranteed by government.* At retirement, individuals may make withdrawals from individual account, regulated to guarantee income for expected lifespan, or buy annuity from private insurance company, or a combination of the two.
Here's an article that discusses the results. In short, it works.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/12-17-97.html
The bottom line is that it doesn't matter how Bush and pals are making their case. They're politicians - what do we expect? Them aside - the system *is* broken - something must be done. There *is* a way to fix it without jeopardizing benefits. The Chileans are living proof.
This "anything Bush is for, I'm against" mentality isn't accomplishing anything. Let's face facts, folks.
EC
Chris Wilson at February 6, 2005 7:44 AM
AARP President Marie smith Tells Black Leadership "No social Security Crisis..."
Atlanta was the hot spot. Tavis Smiley hosted his annual symposium "The State of the Black Union." The forum was held at Rev. Eddie Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. The program focused on defining the African American Agenda. Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition took opportunity to explain to those gathered that the Black Congressional Caucus has in place a ten (10) point plan of action. But regardless of the question of whether or not the agenda set forth by the Caucus is the substance of this group's covenant the forum did establish that the process will include a community unity.
Today, black leaders voiced a need to advance the community. Freedom was the agenda until 1864. Civil rights, voting rights and access to public accomodations followed from 1864 to 1964. Leveraging the black community's collective capital appears to be the new covenant.
They voiced a concern that Democrats have taken the black community for granted and the republican party "just takes, using blacks who really have no power to lead."
The highmark of the event was when the Honorable Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam, explained to the group that "regardless of where we have been, we want to advance our people." He said, " black children can't eat at the table of illusion and hypocrisy." He added, "we can't focus on the house that denied us access for 400 years." He closed, "the hell with democrats and republicans."
These African American leaders, carrying the history and weight of the black experience want group unity. They appear to have found meaning in their individuality and heritage. It's more than a common skin pigmentation. It has now become a community based on a social phenomenon of systematic and comprehensive forces that only those challenged by a longstanding history of discrimination and violence may understand.
The Need:
The level playing field remains more illusion than reality... Since the start of George W. Bush presidency in January 2000 a general concern in the African American community was voiced that on issues that are of the greatest importance to millions of Americans, the President's policies are misplaced priorities. The uncertainty continued into 2004 election.
But there's one truth above all others in second term elections. They are referendums on the incumbent. So as hard as it is to accept, there are other Americans outside the African American community that like the job that George W. Bush is doing. And, with re-election he's not an asterisk anymore alone among American presidents. That is, riding the votes of 59 million (other)Americans, he's the president regardless of the fact that majority of African Americans who voted would rather have had the other guy.
So... it's time to move on. African Americans must put their differences aside. American identity is not a function of birthright but a way of life. The African American community must keep moving toward the America identity it believes is possible. Isn't democracy great?
Some argue "African American leaders judges America from the utopian standard, never comparing America to anything other but the Garden of Eden (immigrants, for example, are said to compare America to their old country)." But, it has been only forty years since separate water fountains of Jim Crow prohibitions and many Americans would now like to proceed as if the slate is clean and the scale is balanced.
The upward strides of many African Americans into the middle class have given the illusion that race cannot be the barrier that some make it out to be. However, one in four African Americans continue to live below the official poverty line (versus approximately one in nine whites). The optimistic assumption of the 1970s and 1980s was that upwardly mobile African Americans were quietly integrating formerly all-white occupations, businesses, neighborhoods, and social clubs. Black middle- and working-class families were moving out of all-black urban neighborhoods and into the suburbs. But, the one black doctor who lives in an exclusive white suburb and the few African American lawyers who work at a large firm are not representative of the today's black community. And although most white Americans are also not doctors or lawyers, the lopsided distribution of occupations for whites does favor such professional and managerial jobs, whereas blacks are clustered in the sales and clerical fields.
In short, the inequalities run even deeper than just income. One must compound and exponentiate the current differences over a history of slavery and Jim Crow, and the nearly fourteenfold wealth advantage that whites enjoy over African Americans—regardless of income, education, or occupation—needs little explanation, and add the failure of the education system where African Americans children are the clear victims.
The explanations for economic inequality perceives the American political economy as being fundamentally fair with virtually everyone guaranteed an equal opportunity to compete, work hard, and excel in American schools, labor markets, housing markets, and other American social institutions. However, using wealth as a measure of economic inequality, the same top twenty percent of American households controlled over sixty-eight percent of the net worth of the United States, leaving virtually no wealth in the hands of the bottom twenty percent.
Economic inequality that characterized the United States at its inception continues to influence contemporary institutional practices and American social institutions routinely discriminate against African Americans denying them the means of acquiring human capital (innate individual capacities such as talent and motivation combined with achieved qualities such as educational qualifications and employment experiences). Limited to segregated neighborhoods, educated in inferior schools, and lacking access to the good jobs that are increasingly located in inaccessible suburban neighborhoods, African Americans bear an unfair share of the costs and economic inequality in the United States constitutes economic injustice.
Recurring discrimination in workplaces and elsewhere wastes human capital and seriously restricts and marginalizes its victims. The negative impact of racial animosity and discrimination includes a sense of threat at work or elsewhere, lowered self-esteem, rage at mistreatment, depression, the development of defensive tactics, a reduction in desire for normal interaction, and other psychological problems. The costs of racial animosity and discrimination extends well beyond the individual to families and communities. While many African Americans may have managed to overcome discrimination, their struggle will take a toll in their personal health or on the ability to maximize contributions to the larger society.
Discussion:
Are some blacks becoming a "black bourgeoisie?"
Are some blacks controlling the wealth and power within the black community and turning its back on its own people?
Are many members of black America adopting the values, standards and ideals of the white middle class, and are trying to distance themselves from the black poor?
In the 1960s, federal entitlement programs, civil rights legislation, equal opportunity statutes and affirmative action programs broke the open barriers of legal segregation. The path to universities and corporations for some blacks was now wide open. More blacks than ever did what their parents only dreamed of – they fled blighted inner-city areas in droves. The new frontier, business where the dollar is made and where significant wealth and resources are at stake.
But, is there a widening rift between the black haves and the black have-nots that has been blurred by racism, ignored by blacks and hidden from white society?
Is black wealth, like white wealth, now concentrated in fewer hands?
A study by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, shows progress toward school desegregation peaked in late 1980s. That is a half-century after the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of American education, schools are almost as segregated as they were when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. The report said that a massive migration of black families toward the suburbs is producing "hundreds of new segregated and unequal schools and frustrating the dream of middle-class minority families." According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test report, by the 12th grade, on average, black students (in the United States) are four years behind those who are white or Asain.
The "NAEP" test report not only average scores for each racial or ethnic group; they also place each individual test-taker in one of four different "achievement levels." The bottom is labeled below basic, which is reserved for students unable to display even "partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills." In five of the seven subjects tested, a majority of black twelfth graders perform Below Basic. In math, the figure is almost seven out of ten, in science more than three out of four.
While this gap may not be hidden from public, black republicans have been inhibited from describing the problem in its full dimensions. But closing the skills gap is the answer to real racial equality in American society.
What, in fact, are black republicans doing with what they aggregate?
Access to positions of power and prestige – and to well-paying jobs in general – are limited because blacks typically leave high school with an eighth-grade education. The status of blacks today is different than it was a half century ago, when almost 90 percent of blacks lived in poverty. By now more than 40 percent of blacks describe themselves as middle class, and a third live in suburbs. College attendance rates are as high although a high percentage drop out before getting a four-year degree. African-Americans are CEOs and occupy lofty positions in the federal government. But all is not well.
The most discouraging news of all is that which has been barely discussed by black leaders: the appalling racial gap in academic achievement in the K-12 years. Without an education, black children are slaves to the world they live in. Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision struck down legalized school segregation to give equal educational access to African Americans and other minorities. But, today's major American educational issue still involves race.
Blacks have no choice but to prepare its young. At least three black men ascended in the aftermath of civil rights movement to become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and an additional 275 or more senior black executives are now no less than three steps away from the CEO. They've attended the nation's most prestigious schools, learned how to navigate the highest reaches of the systems, and they have thrived.
But, for all their great wealth and enormous resources, it appears most sucessful blacks remain absent from the struggle of educating our young. Recently, Kmart Holding Corp. chose Aylwin Lewis to improve the giant retailer's image and operation. Lewis joins Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, Richard Parsons of Time Warner, Ken Chenault of American Express and Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae as the only African American chief executives heading top publicly trading companies in the U.S.
Corporations today say they do look to a talent pool largely comprising minorities and women for their senior and middle managers. But the level of education and the caliber of schools blacks attended are not equal, and the competition for market share is so ferocious that companies must recruit the best talent.
George W. Bush appealed to Americans' best instincts when he declared that no child should be left behind.
But?
All agree that every child in America should have the same opportunity to reach his or her full potential regardless of the color of skin, gender or the income level of the child's parents. The president's plan has set up millions of vulnerable kids for failure, leaving black youth with another dose of mostly symbolic politics. The education reform accountability system based on annual testing in grades three through eight that financially sanctions schools that do not show quick improvement, will do a great deal of additional damage to the children in America's most-troubled public schools. It is wrong to expect schools to succeed virtually overnight when so little is done to attack inequalities in education.
How can he expect the poorest children, who face every disadvantage, to do as well as those who have every advantage?
Given Bush's spending priorities there is little left to finance his efforts to leave no child behind. Further, by the time students enter the third grade, when the Bush testing plan would kick in, much already has been determined about whether individual children will succeed or struggle academically.
America's schools must be accountable to the children being educated in them and to their parents. But making high-stakes annual tests the sole determinant for students and their schools, and imposing major costs on those who fail, is counterproductive.
In closing, assessment should measure, not drive, education reform. Why force schools to spend thousands on consultants to teach test-taking strategies instead of substantive learning? The magic that can happen between a creative teacher and engaged students is too often lost in schools driven by test preparation.
kstreetfriend at March 4, 2005 11:30 AM
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