The Huffington Post has the article Wall Street’s Third Way Absurdly Wrong About Sanders’ Social Security Plan. Maked Capitalism comments on this article in their article titled Third Way Misleads Hard in a Weak Effort to Discredit Social Security Expansion.

Read the rest of this post to understand the magnitude of the deception that Third Way is pushing.

The Naked Capitalism article said:

As Altman goes on to point out, Third Way isn’t even playing straight on the benefit side, to say nothing of ignoring the tax side. The report breaks beneficiaries into quintiles based on average lifetime income.

This made me suspicious that Third Way was using a particularly egregious ploy that few people will understand the depth of the deception unless they think about it a little more deeply.

I went to the original article to see if it was more explicit about this trick. There is a section in that original article:

The only way to even plausibly make the case that the Sanders proposal disproportionately favors the rich is to obscure the facts.
.
.
.
Instead of using dollar figures to analyze to whom the new benefits go, the report refers to “quintiles.”

This does not clarify my point. I will see what I can do to clarify the point. The headline in the Politifact article Bernie Sanders, in Madison, claims top 0.1% of Americans have almost as much wealth as bottom 90% is a good starting point for my explanation.

These numbers can be converted into another way to look at the wealth imbalance per capita. Per capita, the top 0.1% have almost 900 times the wealth that the per capita bottom 90% have. This multiplier of 900 is only for an equal distribution of total wealth between the top 0.1% and the bottom 90%. There is no upper limit on the ratio of what the top can have compared to the bottom. As more and more of the wealth gets concentrated at the top, the multiplier goes up without limit.

This is decidedly not the case when you talk about money received from Social Security in retirement. The top payment from Social Security does not go up without limit. The ratio between the top payment and the minimum payment does not go up without limit. Even if the top payment were 10 times higher (I think an overestimate) than the minimum payment and all the lower 99.9% got the minimum and all the top 0.1% got the maximum, the ratio of total dollars per segment of the population would be [10 X ( 1/1009 )] : [1 x (999/1009)]. This is 0.99% going to the top 0.1% and 99.0% going to the bottom 99.9%.

To summarize the comparison – the top 0.1% of Americans have almost as much wealth as bottom 90% , and, with some pessimistic assumptions about the unequal distribution of Social Security pension benefits, the top 0.1% would get 0.99% of the benefits and the bottom 99.9% would get 99.0% of the benefits. If you took all the skew out of the Social Security payments, the bottom 99.9% would hardly see any difference. If you took all the skew out of the wealth distribution, the bottom 90% would see their wealth double.

I doubt you could have guessed that the Social Security payments could possibly be this minimally skewed compared to the wealth distribution. This is an indication of the magnitude of the deception promulgated by Third Way.

Social Security Works posted this on their Facebook wall.

When we have too much unemployment already  and too much pressure to keep wages down, the last thing we ought to be doing  is trying to prevent people from retiring as early as possible.  How oblivious to the consequences of our actions can one person be?

Social Security Works linked to the National Journal article Jeb Bush Backs Hike in Social Security Retirement Age.

At his appearance, Bush said America’s demographic realities would force changes both to Social Security and Medicare, which he called an even “bigger challenge.”

“We have to be cognizant of that and recognize that someone in their 30s is not going to get the benefits under their current situation,” he said of Social Security.

What Jeb (John Elias Bush) Bush wants you to ignore is that technological changes bringing on ever more rapid automation will trump demographic changes.  Future society will require much less physical work to provide for all the needs of the people on earth than is true of current society.  We will have to choose how to deal with this fact of life.  Do we turn this into a society where every one can have a decent standard of living while equitably sharing in the minimal amount of labor that is needed?  Or do we concentrate the wealth and the work in the hands of the few, because we can eliminate the income and wealth  of all the people that are not “needed”?

This is an important decision that we in society will have to make.  We cannot avoid it.  We see which way the oligarchs want the choice to be made.  Are you going to let them trick you into accepting their choice?

If you find my prediction hard to believe, just mull over the changes we have seen in going from an agricultural society to an industrial one, and soon to a post industrial one.  Fewer and fewer people have been able to produce more and more per hour worked.  Can you project this trend into various possible futures? Can you imagine how impossible it was for people in the old agricultural society to foresee where we are today?

Talking Points Memo has the article New GOP Congress Fires Shot At Social Security On Day One.

With a little-noticed proposal, Republicans took aim at Social Security on the very first day of the 114th Congress.

The incoming GOP majority approved late Tuesday a new rule that experts say could provoke an unprecedented crisis that conservatives could use as leverage in upcoming debates over entitlement reform.

The largely overlooked change puts a new restriction on the routine transfer of tax revenues between the traditional Social Security retirement trust fund and the Social Security disability program. The transfers, known as reallocation, had historically been routine; the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said Tuesday that they had been made 11 times. The CBPP added that the disability insurance program “isn’t broken,” but the program has been strained by demographic trends that the reallocations are intended to address.

The House GOP’s rule change would still allow for a reallocation from the retirement fund to shore up the disability fund — but only if an accompanying proposal “improves the overall financial health of the combined Social Security Trust Funds,” per the rule, expected to be passed on Tuesday. While that language is vague, experts say it would likely mean any reallocation would have to be balanced by new revenues or benefit cuts.

I don’t know why anybody is surprised that the House GOP would waste even a  single day before attacking one of their favorite targets.  It is funny how Democratic run houses of Congress cannot find ways to get anything past the minority opposition, but Republican led houses seem to figure out sneaky ways to bend the rules that will force the minority to swallow whatever the majority wants.

Elizabeth Warren has posted her comments about this on her Facebook pages.

Social Security Works sent me a link to their page Bernie Sanders nails what we need to do for Social Security.

Check out Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) recent speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate where he lays out the argument for expanding, not cutting Social Security benefits.

In 2015, Social Security Works is standing alongside our Social Security champions, Senators Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren, in their fight to protect and expand Social Security benefits.

Don’t get fooled into thinking that Social Security needs to be cut when in fact it needs to be expanded. We need to get at least some of the stolen money out of the hands of the filthy rich, and put it in the hands of people who need it and will spend it to support themselves and our economy.

Watch Elizabeth Warren’s  presentation.  It is only about 5 minutes long.

With Social Security and Medicare under renewed threat from Tea Party extremists in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Congressman Bruce Braley, other members of the House and Senate, the Koch Sisters, seniors from across the country, advocates for seniors and other concerned Americans will hold an event this Thursday, September 18th in Washington, DC to tell the GOP: “HANDS OFF Social Security and Medicare – We Earned It!”.

In this class warfare, our class won’t have a chance if we don’t stand up and fight.