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#social safety net
thoughtportal · 1 year
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Scotland and the UK
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odinsblog · 6 months
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kp777 · 4 months
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By Thom Hartmann
Common Dreams
Nov. 16, 2023
What baffles me is why a TV news personality who earns $2.9 million a year would go to such lengths to avoid even mentioning a solution that’s been signed onto repeatedly by virtually every Democrat in Congress for over a decade.
Why did NBC’s Kristen Welker use an incomplete frame for her question about Social Security at last week’s GOP debate, and why didn’t Lester Holt or anybody else correct her?
Here’s her question:
KRISTEN WELKER: “Americans could see their Social Security benefits drastically cut in the next decade because the program is running out of money. Former President Trump has said quote, ‘Under no circumstances should Republicans cut entitlements.’ Governor Christie, first to you, you have proposed raising the retirement age for younger Americans. What would that age be specifically, and would you consider making any other reforms to Social Security?”
The simple reality is that if a person earns $160,200 a year or less, they pay a 6.2% tax on all of their income. In other words, a person making exactly $160,200 pays $9,932.40 (6.2%) in Social Security taxes.
If you earn $12,000 a year, $56,000 a year, $98,000 a year, or anything under $160,200 a year, you also pay 6.2 cents of tax toward Social Security on every single dollar you earn. If you made $10,000 last year, you pay $620 in Social Security taxes: 6.2 percent. Like the old saying about death and taxes, you can’t avoid it.
BUT those people who make over $160,200 a year pay absolutely nothing — no tax whatsoever — to fund Social Security on every dollar they earn over that amount. After Warren Buffett or Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos pay their $9,932.40 in Social Security taxes on that first $160,200 they took home on the first day of January, every other dollar they take home for the rest of the year is completely Social Security tax-free.
If somebody makes $1,602,000, for example, it would seem fair that, like every other American, they’d pay the same 6.2% ($99,324) in Social Security taxes. But, no: they only pay the $9,932.40 and after that they get to ride tax-free.
If somebody earned $16,020,000 it would seem fair that they’d pay the same 6.2% to support Social Security as 96 percent of Americans do, but no. Instead of paying $1,004,400 in taxes, they only pay $9,932.40.
Hedge fund guys who make a billion a year — yes, there are several of them — can certainly afford to pay 6.2% to keep Social Security solvent. At that rate, they’d be paying $62 million on a billion-dollar income in Social Security taxes as their fair share of maintaining America’s social contract.
But, because the tax rate is capped to “protect” the morbidly rich while sticking the rest of us with the full bill for Social Security, those titans of Wall Street pay the same $9,932.40 as the doctor who lives down the street from you and earns $160,200 a year.
This is, to use the economic technical term, nuts.
And, while every wealthy person in America knows all about this because it’s such a huge benefit to them, I’ll bet fewer than five percent of Americans know how this scam for the rich works. (I searched diligently, but couldn’t find a single survey that asked average folks if they knew about the cap.)
There is no other tax in America that works like this. Most have loopholes designed to promote specific socially desirable goals, like the deductibility of home mortgage interest or children, but no other tax is designed so that anybody earning over $160,200 is completely exempt and no longer has to pay a penny after their first nine thousand or so dollars.
And here’s where it gets really bizarre: if millionaires and billionaires paid the exact same 6.2% into Social Security that most of the rest of us do (and paid it on their investment income, which is also 100% exempt today), the program would not only be solvent for the next 75 years, but it would have so much extra cash that everybody on Social Security could get a significant raise in their monthly benefit payments.
But because America’s morbidly rich don’t want to pay their share for keeping Social Security solvent, Republicans are having a debate about how badly they can screw working class retirees.
They ask:
“Shall we cut the Social Security payments?”
“How about raising the retirement age from 67 (Reagan raised it from 65 to 67) to 70 or even 72?”
“Or maybe we should just hand the entire thing off to JPMorgan or Wells Fargo and let them run it, like we’re doing with Medicare? We could call it Social Security Advantage!”
“Or how about turning Social Security into a welfare program by ‘means testing’ it, so rich people can’t draw from it and every budget year it can become a political football for the GOP like food stamps or WIC?”
Responding to Welker’s severely incomplete question, Chris Christie hit all four:
GOVERNOR CHRISTIE: “Sure, and we have to deal with this problem. Now look, if we raise the retirement age a few years for folks that are in their thirties and forties, I have a son who’s in the audience tonight who’s 30 years old. If he can’t adjust to a few year increase in Social Security retirement age over the next 40 years, I got bigger problems with him than his Social Security payments. “And the fact is we need to be realistic about this. There are only three things that go into determining whether Social Security can be solvent or not. Retirement age, eligibility for the program in general, and taxes. That’s it. We are already overtaxed in this country and we should not raise those taxes. But on eligibility also, I don’t know if out there tonight and if you’re watching Warren, I don’t know if Warren Buffett is collecting Social Security, but if he is, shame on you. You shouldn’t be taking the money.”
Christie was the only one of the five Republicans on the stage who even dared mention taxes.
Nikki Haley said:
“So first of all, any candidate that tells you that they’re not going to take on entitlements, is not being serious. Social Security will go bankrupt in 10 years, Medicare will go bankrupt in eight.”
Neither of those assertions are even remotely true, but, of course, this was a GOP debate. She continued:
“But for like my kids in their twenties, you go and you say we’re going to change the rules, you change the retirement age for them. Instead of cost of living increases, we should go to increases based on inflation. We should limit benefits on the wealthy.”
Her other solution, apropos of nothing, was to end government responsibility for Medicare and privatize the entire program by shutting down real Medicare and throwing us all to the tender mercies of the health insurance billionaires:
“And then expand Medicare Advantage plans. Seniors love that and let’s make sure we do that so that they can have more competition. That’s how we’ll deal with entitlement reform and that’s how we’ll start to pay down this debt.”
Ramaswamy’s answer was so incoherent and off-topic I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say he rambled on about the cost of foreign wars (Ukraine, Israel) “that many blood-thirsty members of both parties have a hunger for.” Apparently, Vivek doesn’t realize that Social Security isn’t part of our government’s overall budget but has its own segregated funds and trust fund.
Since it’s creation in 1935, Social Security never has and never will contribute to the budget deficit or influence any other kind of government spending.
Tim Scott said we should take a cue from Reagan, Bush, and Trump and just cut billionaires’ income taxes again because that does such a great job of stimulating the economy (not) and then claw back the inflation-based raises people on Social Security have received the past three years.
“Number two, you have to cut taxes. … So what we know is that the Laffer Curve still works, for the lower the tax, the higher the revenue. And finally, if we’re going to deal with it, we have to take our annual appropriations back to pre-2020, pre-COVID levels of spending, which would save us about a half a trillion dollars in the next budget window. By doing that, we deal with Social Security and our mandatory spending.”
DeSantis was equally incoherent, also refusing to answer the question about raising the retirement age and completely avoiding any mention of the sweetheart deal his billionaire donors get on their Social Security taxes. Instead, he said we needed to get inflation under control and stop Congress from “taking money from Social Security,” something Congress has never done and legally never will be able to do.
All this incoherence aside, Republicans appear to have a plan to deal with Social Security.
House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson has been pushing a “Catfood Commission” just like Reagan’s 1983 commission that raised the retirement age to 67, reaffirmed the cap on taxes, and made Social Security checks taxable as income. He no doubt expects his commissioners will provide “recommendations” Republicans can run with to cut benefits without raising taxes on their billionaire donors, all while blaming it on the commissioners just like Reagan did in 1983.
When Johnson said that his “top priority” was creating such a commission “immediately” and that his Republican colleagues had responded to the idea “with great enthusiasm,” Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee responded on Xitter:
“A week into his tenure, MAGA Mike Johnson is ALREADY calling for closed-door cuts to the Social Security and Medicare benefits American workers have earned through decades of hard work.”
But back to the original question. I understand why Republicans refuse to even consider lifting the cap on Social Security taxes so their morbidly rich donors won’t have to start paying their fair share of Social Security to keep the program solvent.
What baffles me is why a TV news personality who earns $2.9 million a year would go to such lengths to avoid even mentioning a solution that’s been signed onto repeatedly by virtually every Democrat in Congress for over a decade.
I’ve been watching Kristen Welker on television for years, and she’s generally been a pretty straight shooter as a reporter. Ditto for Lester Holt, who sat right beside her. This, frankly, astonished me.
Were they afraid Republicans would exact revenge on them if they raised the question of the tax cap?
Or was it precisely because they’re making millions, just like most of the executives they answer to?
More broadly, is this why we almost never hear any discussion whatsoever in the media — populated with other news stars who also make millions a year, managed by millionaire network executives — about lifting the cap?
One hopes the answer isn’t that crass...
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politijohn · 10 months
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A "secure" system can be the most dangerous of all
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Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing Bruce Schneier explain that “security” doesn’t exist in the abstract. You can only be secure from some threat. A fire alarm won’t protect you from burglaries. A condom won’t protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about “security” without any mention of who is being made secure, and from which threat?
Take the US welfare system. It is very “secure” in that it is hedged in by a thicket of red-tape, audits, inspections and onerous procedures. To get food stamps, housing vouchers, or cash aid, you must navigate a Soviet-grade bureaucratic system of Kafkaesque proportions. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the USA has become a “Utopia Of Rules” (as David Graeber put it), subjecting everyday people to the state-run bureacracies that the USAUSAUSA set endlessly ridiculed the USSR for:
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/
(The right says it wants to “shrink the US government until fits in a bathtub — and then drown it” — but not the whole government. They want unlimited government bloat for that part of the state that is dedicated to tormenting benefits claimants, especially if its functions are managed by a Beltway Bandit profiteer who bills Uncle Sucker up the wazoo for rubber-stamping “DENIED” on every claim.)
The US benefits system has a sophisticated, expensive, fully staffed anti-fraud system — but it’s a highly selective form of anti-fraud. The system is oriented solely to prevent fraud against itself, with no thought to protecting benefits recipients themselves from fraud.
And those recipients — by definition the poorest and most vulnerable among us — are easy pickings for continuous, ghastly, eye-watering acts of fraud. These benefits are distributed via prepaid debit cards — EBT Cards — that lack the basic security measures that every other kind of card has had for years. These are simple magstripe cards, lacking basic chip-and-pin defenses, to say nothing of contactless countermeasures.
That means that fraudsters can — and do — install skimmers in the point-of-sale terminals used by benefits recipients to withdraw their cash benefits, pay for food using SNAP (AKA Food Stamps), and receive other benefits.
It’s impossible to overstate how widespread these skimmers are, and how much money criminals make by stealing from poor people. Writing for Businessweek, Jessica Fu describes the mad scramble benefits recipients go through every month, standing by ATMs at midnight on the night of the first of every month in hopes of withdrawing the cash they use to pay for their rent and utility bills before it is stolen by a crook who captured their card number with a skimmer:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-28/ebt-theft-takes-millions-of-dollars-from-the-neediest-americans
One of Fu’s sources, Lexisnexis Risk Solutions’s Haywood Talcove, describes these EBT cards as having the security of a “glorified hotel room key.” He recounts how US police departments saw a massive explosion in EBT skimming: from 300 complaints in January 2022 to 18,000 in January 2023.
The skimmer rings are extremely well organized. The people who install the skimmers — working in pairs, with one person to distract the cashier while the other quickly installs the skimmer — don’t know who they work for. Neither do the people who use cards cloned from skimmer data to cash out benefits recipients’ accounts. When they are arrested, they refuse to turn on their immediate recruiters, fearing reprisals against their families.
These low-level crooks stroll up to ATMs and feed a succession of cloned cards into them, emptying account after account. Or they swipe cards at grocery checkouts, buying cases of Red Bull and other easily sold grocery products with some victim’s entire SNAP balance.
Some police agencies are pursuing these criminal gangs and trying figure out who’s running them, but the authorities who issue SNAP cards are doing little to nothing to stop the pipeline at their end. Simply upgrading SNAP terminals to chip-and-pin would exponentially raise the cost and complexity that thieves incur.
Indeed, that’s why every other kind of payment card uses these systems. How is it that these systems were upgraded, while SNAP cards remain in mired in 20th century “glorified hotel room key” territory? Well, as our friends on the right never cease to remind us: “incentives matter.”
When your credit card gets cloned, it’s your banks and credit card company that pays for the losses, not you. So the banks demanded (and funded) the upgrade to new anti-fraud measures. By contrast, most states have no system for refunding stolen benefits to skimmers’ victims.
In other words, all of the anti-fraud in the benefits system is devoted to catching benefits cheating — a phenomenon that is so rare as to be almost nonexistent (1.54%), notwithstanding right wingers’ fevered, Reagan-era folktales about “welfare queens”:
https://blog.gitnux.com/food-stamp-fraud-statistics/
Meanwhile, the most widespread and costly form of fraud in the benefits system — fraud perpetrated against benefits recipients — is blithely ignored.
Really, it’s worse than that. In deciding to protect the welfare system rather than welfare recipients, we’ve made it vastly harder for benefits claimants who’ve been victimized by fraudsters to remain fed and sheltered. After all, if we made it simple and straightforward for benefits recipients to re-claim money that was stolen from them, we’d make it that much easier to defraud the system.
“Security” is always and forever a matter of securing some specific thing, against some specific risk. In other words, security reflects values — it reveals whose risk matters, and whose doesn’t. For the American benefits system, risks to the system matter. Risks to people don’t.
It’s not just the welfare system that prioritizes its own risks against the people it exists to serve. Think of the systems used to fight drug abuse in clinical settings.
Medical facilities that use or dispense powerful pain-killers have exquisitely tuned, sophisticated, frequently audited security systems to prevent patients from tricking their doctors or pharmacists into administering extra drugs (especially opioids). “Extra” in this case means “more drugs than are strictly necessary to manage pain.”
The rationale for this is only incidentally medical. Someone who gets a little too much painkiller during a medical procedure or an acute pain episode is not at any particular risk of enduring harm — the risks are minor and easily managed (say, by keeping a patient in bed a little longer while they recover from sedation).
The real agenda here is preventing addiction and abuse by addicted people. There’s a genuine problem with opioid abuse, and that problem does have its origins in overprescription. But — crucially — that overprescription wasn’t the result of wimpy patients insisting on endless painkillers until they enslaved themselves to their pills.
Rather, the opioid epidemic has its origins in the billionaire Sackler crime family, whose Purdue Pharma used scientific fraud, cash incentives, and other deceptive practices to trick, coerce, or bribe doctors into systematically overprescribing their Oxycontin cash cow, even as they laundered their reputation with showy charitable donations:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/12/monopolist-solidarity/#sacklers-billions
The Sacklers got to keep their billions — and people undergoing painful medical procedures or living with chronic pain are left holding the bag, subject to tight pain-med controls that forces them to prove — through increasingly stringent systems — that they truly deserve their medicine.
In other words, the beneficiary of the opioid control system is the system itself — not the patients who need opioids.
There’s an extremely disturbing — even nightmarish — example of this in the news: the Yale Fertility Clinic, where hundreds of women endured unimaginably painful egg harvesting procedures with no anaesthesia at all.
These women had complained for years about the pain they suffered, and many had ended up needing emergency care after the fact because of traumatic injuries caused by undergoing the procedure without pain control. But the doctors and nurses at the Yale clinic ignored their screams of pain and their post-operative complaints.
It turned out that an opioid-addicted nurse had been swapping the fentanyl in the drug cabinet for saline, and taking the fentanyl home for her own use.
This made national headlines at the time, and it is the subject of “The Retrievals,” a new New York Times documentary series podcast:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html
If the pain medication management system was designed to manage pain, then these thefts would have been discovered early on. If the system was designed so that anyone who experienced pain was treated until the pain was under control, the deception would have been uncovered almost immediately.
As Stafford Beer said, “the purpose of any system is what it does.” The pain medication management system was designed to manage pain medication, not pain itself.
The system was designed to be secure from opioid-seeking addicted patients. It was not designed to make patients secure from pain. Its values — our values, as a society — were revealed through its workings.
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If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/13/whose-security/#for-me-not-thee
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[Image ID: A down-the-barrel view of a massive, battleship-gray artillery piece protruding from the brick battlement of a fortress. From the black depths of the barrel shines a red neon 'EBT' sign.]
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Image: Bjarne Henning Kvaale (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscarsborg_28cm_Krupp_cannon_4_-_panoramio.jpg
CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
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gwydionmisha · 11 months
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Now might be a good time to contact all your Congress Critters in both houses with support for a clean raise of the Debt Ceiling.  Shore up blue, castigate red.
If you can't safely contact them in person, here are some other options:
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to the representative of your choice.
Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resist.bot/
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dandelionrevolution · 19 days
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I’m not sure how reliably I’ll be able to keep up with it, but I’ve been wanting to start posting weekly or monthly Good News compilations, with a focus on ecology but also some health and human rights type stuff. I’ll try to keep the sources recent (like from within the last week or month, whichever it happens to be), but sometimes original dates are hard to find. Also, all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.
Anyway, here’s some good news from the first week of March!
1. Mexican Wolf Population Grows for Eighth Consecutive Year
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““In total, 99 pups carefully selected for their genetic value have been placed in 40 wild dens since 2016, and some of these fosters have produced litters of their own. While recovery is in the future, examining the last decade of data certainly provides optimism that recovery will be achieved.””
2. “Remarkable achievement:” Victoria solar farm reaches full power ahead of schedule
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“The 130MW Glenrowan solar farm in Victoria has knocked out another milestone, reaching full power and completing final grid connection testing just months after achieving first generation in late November.”
3. UTEP scientists capture first known photographs of tropical bird long thought lost
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“The yellow-crested helmetshrike is a rare bird species endemic to Africa that had been listed as “lost” by the American Bird Conservancy when it hadn’t been seen in nearly two decades. Until now.”
4. France Protects Abortion as a 'Guaranteed Freedom' in Constitution
“[A]t a special congress in Versailles, France’s parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to add the freedom to have an abortion to the country’s constitution. Though abortion has been legal in France since 1975, the historic move aims to establish a safeguard in the face of global attacks on abortion access and sexual and reproductive health rights.”
5. [Fish & Wildlife] Service Approves Conservation Agreement for Six Aquatic Species in the Trinity River Basin
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“Besides conserving the six species in the CCAA, activities implemented in this agreement will also improve the water quality and natural flows of rivers for the benefit of rural and urban communities dependent on these water sources.”
6. Reforestation offset the effects of global warming in the southeastern United States
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“In America’s southeast, except for most of Florida and Virginia, “temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled,” due to reforestation, even as most of the world has grown warmer, reports The Guardian.”
7. Places across the U.S. are testing no-strings cash as part of the social safety net
“Cash aid without conditions was considered a radical idea before the pandemic. But early results from a program in Stockton, Calif., showed promise. Then interest exploded after it became clear how much COVID stimulus checks and emergency rental payments had helped people. The U.S. Census Bureau found that an expanded child tax credit cut child poverty in half.”
8. The Road to Recovery for the Florida Golden Aster: Why We Should Care
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“After a five-year review conducted in 2009 recommended reclassifying the species to threatened, the Florida golden aster was proposed for removal from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Plants due to recovery in June 2021, indicating the threats to the species had been reduced or eliminated.”
9. A smart molecule beats the mutation behind most pancreatic cancer
“Researchers have designed a candidate drug that could help make pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, a treatable, perhaps even curable, condition.”
10. Nurses’ union at Austin’s Ascension Seton Medical Center ratifies historic first contract
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“The contract, which NNOC said in a news release was “overwhelmingly” voted through by the union, includes provisions the union believes will improve patient care and retention of nurses.”
This and future editions will also be going up on my new Ko-fi, where you can support my art and get doodled phone wallpapers! EDIT: Actually, I can't find any indication that curating links like this is allowed on Ko-fi, so to play it safe I'll stick to just posting here on Tumblr. BUT, you can still support me over on Ko-fi if you want to see my Good News compilations continue!
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imkeepinit · 4 months
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pocket-size-cthulhu · 9 months
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My mom always says that people who want to redistribute wealth never seem to want to redistribute their own.
Aside from that literally being The Point, I think it's so silly. You know why I keep a savings account? Mainly because there's not a social safety net to take care of me if something bad happened. If I lost my job or had a big health problem, I would have to rely on my own saved up wealth to save me.
If I knew that healthcare was cheap or free, I wouldn't need that money. If I knew that I could easily get help if I lost my job, I wouldn't need that money! I'd need much less savings cause it would be for smaller emergencies like car trouble or like... Broken house things.
And here's the best part: if I didn't have to save for all of those big things, I could happily pay a fraction of that more in taxes to make sure that others also don't have to pay for those things. Extra taxes for healthcare or whatever are cheap when we all pay them.
And at that point most of our savings could be for things we need and want. Personally, I'd like to see everybody have access to food, housing and healthcare before I go on any extravagant vacations. I'm not rich, I'm not really even middle class, I don't have much wealth to redistribute and if we redistributed all wealth I'd probably end up with a lot more than what I have now. But like. While I have more than what I need right now, I wish I could use it to help people instead of having to squirrel it away against an emergency.
I know the need for savings will never go anywhere, but we can lift the burden of savings/debt/poverty off people who need it the most if only we had universal healthcare. Genuinely seems ridiculous for a nation claiming to be rich and advanced not to have universally available healthcare.
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Neseman
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“Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.” ― Hubert H. Humphrey
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thefloralmenace · 5 months
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I'm watching a documentary about how the techniques of psychotherapy have been twisted for politics and advertising, and there's a lot to talk about, and this is only tangentially related BUT:
I'm on part about Bill Clinton doing focus groups with swing voters where they discovered most of them were not in favor of a cent of their tax dollars going to any welfare-type social program that did not benefit them directly.
Beyond any moral objections to this stance that one might have, if you feel this way, please understand that THE EXISTENCE OF SOCIAL PROGRAMS IS A BENEFIT TO YOU PERSONALLY BECAUSE TERRIBLE THINGS THAT NO ONE EXPECTS HAPPEN TO PEOPLE EVERYDAY THAT MAKE THEM UNABLE TO WORK. YOU ARE PAYING A FORM OF PERSONAL INSURANCE WHEN YOUR TAXES FUND SOCIAL SAFETY NETS - INSURANCE THAT THAT SAFETY NET WILL BE THERE TO CATCH YOU IF YOU FALL.
You might think you've done enough planning to avoid the pitfalls of life, but one freak accident at work, a cancer diagnosis, the sudden death of one parent in a two-income household, etc. can be all it takes to thrust people into poverty. These things are a benefit to everyone by their existence. It is good for your taxes to go to these things if they are managed well/ethically.
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odinsblog · 5 months
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Take 1: Republicans scoffed at Democratic Rep. Katherine Clark for pointing out that Jim Jordan wants to cut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare
Take 2: Republican Tom Cole bragging that Jim Jordan’s long history of wanting to cut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare makes him the ideal candidate for Speaker of the House
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kp777 · 8 months
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By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams
Aug. 2, 2023
Excerpt:
[....]
Three of Trump's Republican 2024 opponents—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, ex-Vice President Mike Pence, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley—are now publicly pushing for changes to the program that would affect younger people.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have also set their sights on the program and are currently fighting for funding cuts to the Social Security Administration that Julie Tippens, legislative director of the American Federation of Government Employees, recently warned would "devastate the agency's ability to serve the American public."
Earlier this year, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced plans to establish a "commission" to examine ways to cut Social Security, and the 175-member Republican Study Committee proposed raising the program's full retirement age to 69.
Read more.
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If you have time for one long read this holiday weekend, make it this one.
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morlibertarianism · 1 year
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The Falsehood of the "Meth-Caused Homelessness" Claim: A Libertarian Response
Homelessness is a complex and multifaceted issue, and it is simplistic and reductionist to suggest that it is caused by a single factor such as meth addiction. While meth addiction may be a factor for some homeless individuals, it is important to recognize that it is not the sole cause and that a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing homelessness will not be effective.
Homelessness has multiple root causes, including lack of affordable housing, job insecurity, mental illness, and the failure of social safety net programs. Additionally, excessive zoning regulations can limit the availability of affordable housing, contributing to the homelessness problem.
So what can be done to address homelessness? Rather than relying on targeted government intervention, we should focus on strategies that lower time prices and make resources more affordable. This can include policies that reduce the cost of living, such as lowering taxes and regulatory burdens, and that increase access to credit and capital, making it easier for individuals to help themselves and others. By empowering individuals to take control of their own lives and overcome homelessness, we can create a more prosperous and self-sufficient society.
It is important to recognize the complexity of homelessness and to approach it with a nuanced and multifaceted approach. Only by understanding the root causes and implementing targeted solutions can we hope to make a lasting impact and reduce homelessness in our communities. This means moving beyond simplistic explanations that pin the blame on a single factor such as meth addiction, and instead considering the multiple root causes of homelessness. It also means focusing on strategies that lower time prices and make resources more affordable, rather than relying solely on targeted government intervention that may function more as a jobs program for those who claim to help the homeless rather than actually helping the homeless. By empowering individuals to take control of their own lives and overcome homelessness, we can create a more prosperous and self-sufficient society.
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bitchesgetriches · 1 year
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How To Start at Rock Bottom: Welfare Programs and the Social Safety Net
Income inequality is a real thing. Let’s start there. We are not all starting on a level playing field. In fact, some are actually starting at rock bottom.
Whatever way you define rock bottom, it’s a shitty place to start when envisioning your financial future. And it’s a frightening reality for many Americans. Giving advice about how my fellow college-educated Millennials can get ahead in their careers, defeat their student loans, and buy homes is all well and good. But it’s utterly useless advice for someone with no education, no family support, and no job prospects to speak of. It’s useless to those drowning in medical debt or responsible for supporting a family on a minimum wage salary.
You can’t think about Step 1 when you’re currently at Step -37. Those living at rock bottom need to achieve a basic standard of survival before they can think about “getting ahead.”
Keep reading.
If you liked this article, join our Patreon!
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