Preserving Social Security: What Students Say

I was intrigued by the front page story in Monday’s Visalia Times-Delta about a recent national poll on Social Security, (Poll: Raise taxes if it will save Social Security) so I decided to conduct the same survey with my students at College of the Sequoias to compare their responses with those of Americans as a whole.  

According to Associated Press writer Stephen Ohlemacher, the AP-GfK survey consisted of two questions, both dealing with proposed solutions to the long-term solvency of the Social Security program.  The first asked whether respondents would rather raise taxes or cut benefits.  53 percent said to raise taxes and 36 percent preferred to cut benefits.  The second question posed a choice between increasing the retirement age and cutting benefits.  53 percent said to raise the retirement age while 35 percent said they would cut monthly payments. 

In both cases, strong majorities, 17 and 18 percent, favored preserving Social Security income for seniors, even at the cost of higher taxes or a longer wait to start collecting benefits.  Since most of my students are between 18 and 25 years old, I was curious whether how they would feel about a program whose benefits are more than 40 years in the future for most of them.  The results were remarkable.

212 students in my History classes took the survey.  I asked them to mark their choices individually without talking them over with classmates.  To question one, 128 students chose Option A, to “Raise the Social Security tax and pay full benefits.”  84 opted for Option B, “Keep Social Security taxes the same and reduce benefits.”  Thus 60 percent preferred the idea of raising the tax to preserve full benefits while 40 percent wanted to cut benefits rather than raise taxes.

On question two, 130 students picked Option A, “Raise the retirement age and pay full benefits.”  82 chose Option B, “Keep the retirement age the same and reduce benefits.”  On this question 61 percent said they would rather raise the retirement age and 39 percent to cut benefits.  The majorities were therefore 20 percent on increasing taxes rather than cutting payments and 22 percent on increasing the eligibility age rather than cutting payments. 

Both results are in line with the national findings, but are held even more strongly.  One might have expected younger people to be less supportive of a system most of them will not benefit from for many years, as compared to a survey population that included senior citizens drawing benefits at the present time and other workers currently much closer to retirement.  One might also have expected opinion in our rather conservative area to be more resistant to a tax increase than in the nation at large.  Neither expectation would have been accurate, at least among this sampling of local college-enrolled young adults.

The students’ choices seem to indicate a strong attachment to Social Security, perhaps partly for the benefit of older relatives and family friends currently receiving benefits, and partly for their own retirement security after their working years are over.  Most are prepared to make sacrifices to keep the system solvent for the foreseeable future.  Among these young adults, Social Security remains a popular program they hope to keep around and viable for a long time to come.

Yes on Proposition 30

Californians should do the right thing and vote yes on Proposition 30 this November 6.  The passage of Proposition 30 will not only staunch the disastrous litany of cuts to education and public services, but will also finally enable the state to balance its budget.  Go to the complete official explanation of Prop 30 on the Secretary of State's website here.

If Proposition 30 does not pass the state will be forced to cut an additional $6 billion from education next year.  That's on top of $20 billion in cuts over the past three years.  The cuts would include $500 million to the University of California, $750 million to the California State University system, $300 million to the community colleges and $4.5 billion to k-12 schools.  We have already laid off 30,000 teachers in the state, with the resulting increase in class sizes, and losses in such classes as languages, the arts and vocational offerings.  On the Community College level alone it has meant the denial of access to college for 485,000 students per year.

Proposition 30 would forestall these added blows to our childrens' education at a surprisingly modest cost.  Prop 30 would increase the sales tax by 1/4 of a percent for four years.  That is the total impact 99% of Californians would see on the revenue side.  A $100 pair of shoes would cost 25 cents more.  A fancy $1000 hi def flat screen TV would cost an extra $2.50.  Even a nice $20,000 new car would only cost an extra 50 bucks.  Most people wouldn't even notice.  For people at the highest income levels, an additional 1% income tax would be assessed for joint filers making $500,000 to $600,000, 2% for those making $600,000 to $1 million, and 3% on incomes over $1 million.  In other words, an adjusted income after deductions of half a mill would pay an extra $5,000 a year.  These levies would expire in 7 years.

We can continue providing our children less and less education while our international competitors, particularly in China and India, ramp theirs up.  We can continue turning away hundreds of thousands of young men and women from the college degrees that will give them an opportunity for a middle class standard of living.  Or we can, for a very modest cost, address these crucial needs and balance our state budget at the same time.  The choice is clear and obvious.  Vote yes on Proposition 30.  

Good Read on Economic Solutions

Paul Krugman teaches economics at Princeton University and won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on international trade and production.  He also writes a regular column for the New York Times.  I recently read his book The Conscience of a Liberal.  Using words and concepts a layperson can understand, this work provides a clear understanding of the processes that have put the American middle class into increasingly difficult straits.  I recommend it to anyone who is concerned about growing the economy and reversing these trends.

Given the title, Krugman's work was not exactly what I expected it to be.  I envisioned a philosophical examination of Krugman's idea of what a liberal is, or perhaps a personal epiphany of how he came to his perspectives.  While these topics are implicit in the book, it is primarily a no-nonsense, nuts and bolts explication of trends over the past thirty-plus years that have resulted in an ever-growing concentration of wealth in fewer people at the top and a commensurately ever-diminishing level of services, income and consequently, opportunities for everyone else.  The author backs his conclusions up with plenty of data.  He wrote the hardcover edition in 2007, before the recent crash, but the paperback edition has a new introduction written in 2009 that takes it into account.  Regardless, the points and facts are still valid and on point.

Central to Krugman's point is that from the Great Depression of the 1930s through a period of over 40 years, government policy intentionally favored and fostered an economy that spread benefits widely throughout the labor force.   He starts out with a survey of "The Way We Were," an economic picture of America of the 1950s and 1960s, a time when there were far fewer mega rich and an enormous and growing middle class of shared prosperity.  He calls this period of lessening inequality and widespread improvement in the financial well-being of the broad majority the "Great Compression."  

Krugman shows how benefits like Social Security, universal education, the public university systems, the GI Bill and Medicare, spending and research programs such as the interstate highway system and the space program, a government stance that protected the union movement, and a tax policy that funded these initiatives and encouraged companies to invest broadly in their people while dissuading the paying of astronomical sums to individuals worked to the end of a society that produced a rising tide that raised all boats. 

As a consummate international economist, Krugman is specifically able to refute the contention that simple market forces alone have caused the growing concentration of wealth of recent decades by comparing the American experience to those of other countries who have followed different policies than the U.S. such as Germany and Canada.  Such countries have retained high union membership,  broad-based income gains shared by all income levels levels within the labor force and a superior level of services than here.

Krugman next turns to a survey of the growth of extreme conservatism, its policy victories and their pernicious effects on society as a whole as it enormously aggrandizes a few while progressively pauperizing the rest.  In his section "Confronting Inequality" he administers his prescriptions for reversing these lamentable trends.  Among these are restoring greater progressivity to the income tax, taxing capital gains like regular income, raising the minimum wage (it's still far below where it was in 1955 in inflation-adjusted dollars), guaranteeing universal health care, providing far greater assistance to education and college affordability, making much greater investment in social and tangible assets, and returning to union-friendly policies.     

The Ryan Pick

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate clearly marks the direction his campaign will take.  Ryan, the House budget chair, is a true believer in cutting taxes for the wealthy and paying for them by slashing support for students, the elderly and the poor.  The Ryan pick will thus energize GOP Tea Party supporters and elate Wall Street but will alienate just about everyone else.

Representative Ryan (R-Wisconsin) is smart, well-spoken and looks like the guy next door.  What he stands for, however, is the same supply-side ideology that has served few others than the top 1%.  His famous proposed budget  envisions reducing the top tax rate from 35% to 25% and the capital gains rate charged on income like stocks to zero.  People like Romney would pay virtually no tax at all under Ryan's plan.

In order to still try to cut expenses in the face of such large revenue reductions, Ryan would put a cap on Medicare and turn it into a voucher program in which seniors would have to go out and try to find insurance for themselves.  Since the Obama health plan with its requirements that people be eligible for insurance regardless of pre-existing conditions would be repealed under a Romney-Ryan administration, you can imagine what luck the typical 80-year-old would have in trying to buy insurance on the open market.  According to the congressional Budget office, the plan would cost seniors an additional $6500 a year--all so that millionaires and billionaires could enjoy greater tax breaks. 

There would be other cuts too, to Medicaid, education, student loans, food stamps, infrastructure and much else.  He asks for many sacrifices from those who can least afford it in order to shower benefits on those who already have it made.  The upshot of Ryan's addition to the ticket is that it plays right into the Obama campaign's characterization of Romney as out of touch with the average American and concerned only with the welfare of the rich.  The President has already begun making these points and highlighting Ryan's other budget ideas on the trail in Iowa today.

Representative Steve Israel, (D-New York) chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign, is suddenly very optimistic about picking up House seats in November.  He said today that Democratic candidates should concentrate on three issues this fall: "Medicare, Medicare and Medicare."

It is difficult to see how Ryan's draconian outlook will help the GOP ticket with undecided and swing voters.  The dynamics of the election are starting to look a lot like 1996, when Bill Clinton won re-election over another Republican team featuring a lead candidate with a lot of shortcomings and a number two known as an idea man whose ideas upon examination proved to be highly unpopular.  In those days it was Bob Dole and Jack Kemp.  Nowadays the team of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, running against another Democratic incumbent, face many of the same problems.  It is likely Gov. Romney has hurt his chances more than helped them with this choice.

Thirty-fifth Anniversary

Today marks thirty-five years since Joan and I exchanged vows at St. John Vianney Church in Hacienda Heights, California. Things have changed a lot since those days. Disco fever was at its peak and gas was sixty-two cents a gallon. The Soviet Union menaced the world but Iran was friendly to the United States. Listening to recorded music meant getting out a vinyl record or a cassette tape. The common denominator was that we were in love and eager to start our lives together at the ages of 23 and 22.

Since then a lot of water has gone under the bridge. We have lived in five different residences and have worked at eight full-time and innumerable extra part-time jobs between us. We have driven ten different vehicles. We have sent our two daughters to eight different schools, seen one of them married and both of them grow into fine young women. Joan and I have visited twenty-five states and six foreign countries together.

And we're still in love. It's not quite the same desperate longing and heart-racing type of love as it was back then most of the time. Now it's more often a love like a comfortable sweater or pillow: warm, reassuring and deeply appreciated.

It is a wonderful and miraculous thing to have one to be unselfconsciously devoted to and to have that devotion returned without question or hesitation. Sure we get on each other's nerves from time to time, but the underlying love and commitment never wavers. It's a great feeling to have someone who is always in your corner. The one thing I'm more convinced of than ever is that love truly is the most important thing in life. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. Happy anniversary, honey, and thanks for thirty-five great years!