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Absender : meisenscher@igc.apc.org (Michael Eisenscher) Org.-Empf. : LABNEWS@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU Weiterleiter owner-labnews@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU Antwort an : LABNEWS@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU Betreff : Social Security Articles Datum : Mi 20.05.98, 20:31 (erhalten: 21.05.98) Groesse : 9245 Bytes ----------------------------------------------------------------------
SOCIAL SECURITY: FACTS, NOT FICTION. As the critical national conversation on Social Security moves forward, it’s important that it is based on information and reason. To that end, the Twentieth Century Fund is publishing a series of issue briefs and other materials on the important elements of this critical national debate. The Fund's new issue brief, "10 Myths About Social Security" refutes the most widely held myths about Social Security. Among the mistaken notions it takes on: Social Security will have to stop payments to retirees in 2032; We would all do better if Social Security were replaced, in whole or in part, by a system of individual private accounts; The Social Security Administration is a big government bureaucracy that wastes a lot of taxpayers’ money; and Compared with the private investment market, Social Security provides a meager payoff to workers relative to their lifetime contributions. http://www.tcf.org/10_Myths.html
RAMPANT BULL: KUTTNER ON THE RENEWED THREAT TO SOCIAL SECURITY. Social Security's financial crisis is exaggerated, but its political vulnerability and the allure of wealth creation are real, " says TAP coeditor Robert Kuttner in the forthcoming issue of The American Prospect. Kuttner analyzes the four factors that have brought about this epic shift in Social Security's political vulnerability and provides a rebuttal of the program's critics and a proposal for effectively defending social insurance. http://epn.org/prospect/39/39kuttfs.html
SOCIAL SECURITY INFORMATION PROJECT. The Institute for America's Future has started a listserver for its Social Security Information Project. The listserver allows everyone participating to share information (via email) about the emerging debate over the future of Social Security. SSIP is the new coalition organized to preserve and strengthen Social Security in light of the threat of privatization. If you would like to be added to the SSIP listserver, please contact the Tom Matzzie at "America's Future" by emailing matzzie@ourfuture.org .
EXTENDING THE ROTH IRA TAX BREAK LEAVES LOOMING REVENUE HOLE. The version of the Internal Revenue Service reform bill (H.R. 2676) the Senate passed on May 7, 1998 will cost about $18 billion over the next 10 years. A number of small tax increases are included in the bill to offset its cost. Remarkably, one of the revenue-raising offsets--which finances $8 billion of the bill's $18 billion cost--is not a tax increase but a tax *cut*. It is an extension of the Roth IRA tax break enacted last year to a specific group of higher-income taxpayers who are not now eligible for it. The sole beneficiaries of the IRA expansion would be older taxpayers with incomes exceeding $100,000 and their heirs--the highest-income five percent to seven percent of the senior citizen population. At a time when the nation faces long-term deficits in the Social Security and Medicare systems on which millions of elderly and disabled Americans rely for support of basic needs, providing a new tax break that enables the most affluent elderly to become yet more affluent is not the budget priority on which most Americans would knowingly choose to spend $13 billion. Moreover, the revenue gain is only temporary, warns Iris J. Lav in this analysis for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In the subsequent 10-year period from 2008 to 2017, Lav points out, the IRA modification would lose $13 billion in revenue. As a result, the total package of revenue offsets in the Senate IRS reform bill that raises $18 billion over the 1998-2007 period would not continue to raise revenue but instead would lose approximately $4 billion over the subsequent 10 years from 2008 through 2017. For details, see: http://www.cbpp.org/515tax.htm
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Last Modified: July 1998