Social Security

Here's what's going on

• The President is at the University of Maryland today talking to people about the debt deal.
• Summer internships on Wall Street have fewer perks and more quirks.
• Reviews continue to come in for Margaret Hoover's book about how the Republican Party can win over young voters. I still don't think it's true but once I get the book I'll give a better analysis. Other Republican bloggers are saying that the GOP should exploit the growing disenchantment between the President and young voters for their own electoral dysfunction.
• Students and College Presidents have been lobbying The Hill all week to help save Pell Grants. I know there are a lot of orgs out there doing great work around this - but you should call your Members of Congress TODAY and make sure they know how you feel.
• 55% of young voters oppose the tax on online purchases in California coined the Amazon Tax.
• Election Day Registration advocates in Maine are still working hard to build awareness around the People's Veto of the Governor's bill to end the 40 year long practice of EDR.
• Young voters continue to support Social Security but they worry about its possibility for preservation.

  This piece quotes a report that came out Wednesday from the Economic Policy Institute that says that young voters are uninformed around SS and as such will believe whatever they're told unless we better educate them.

  "The Economic Policy Institute seeks to address the skepticism and lack of interest and understanding with this comprehensive guide to Social Security—written by young authors for young people."

• In pop culture news - sexting is all the rage on college campuses... It's also all the rage in Congress.. didn't you see the news? Old people always complain about how young people are always looking down at their phones all the time... well if you were sexting wouldn't you?
• Victoria (in Australia) is using social media in high schools to help combat homophobia.
• Young Americans are apparently choosing the burbs over the cities when it comes to buying houses.
  

  "The 2000 census showing an explosion of 25-34 year-olds living in inner cities was cited by urban planners and demographers as evidence that American youth were reversing their parents' movements and were moving back to the city. But the newer data shows that this trend has now reversed itself: this generation, now ten years older, has moved back to the suburbs to settle down.

  In the last ten years, this group's presence grew 12% in the suburbs and shrunk by 22.7% in "historic core cities," like New York and San Francisco, according to Joel Kotkin at Forbes."

  This probably has more to do with education and children than anything else. Those who were living in the cities when they were 25 ten years ago are at 35 probably starting families and thinking about schools for their kids. Sadly many public schools in urban areas aren't up to par and those who can afford to move and buy houses or live in areas with wealthier schools will jump on it to give their kids better education. That said... 35 year olds are more the tail end of Generation X than Millennials. I think the jury is still out on how Millennials will chose to settle in the housing market.

• And from the HANG ON A MINUTE files - a new study out tries to say that young people find having health insurance to be a turn on in dating. As it turns out this "survey" was paid for by an insurance company. Imagine that. So don't think going out this week and grabbing a plan will get you laid tonight. As it turns out you still have to be attractive and interesting. I know.... sucks huh?
  
• Some interesting charts and graphs from ChartPorn. It's a new study on the history of collegiate grade inflation
  
  

I've been getting a little bit of pushback from the piece posted yesterday about entitlement spending, right wing orgs funding youth groups, and the weekend conference "Exploring the Millennial Generation’s Return on Investment" hosted in part by Mobilize.org. Mobilize reminded me that AARP was also part of the funding for the conference - which in turn reminded me of the Newsweek article one of my favorite writers, Robert Samuelson, posted this morning all about how AARP wants to screw young people.

Screw is an awfully powerful word... perhaps undermine is more accurate. It isn't surprising that the AARP co-sponsored the entitlement conference because they very strongly support entitlements. The problem is that they don't want young people to have them, they just want us to pay for the Baby Boomers to have them.

Samuelson talks about the $1.3trillion spent on programs that take care of primarily older generations. These were created during the New Deal to take care of older people, the result has become that an entire culture of older people now live independently in swank facilities or in their own homes when they age, vs. years ago when they moved back in with their children who took care of them. Spending like this is also why we saw such a significant decrease in the poverty rate among the elderly since the 1960's as Social Security spending increased.

"Now comes the House-passed health-care "reform" bill that, amazingly, would extract more subsidies from the young. It mandates that health insurance premiums for older Americans be no more than twice the level of that for younger Americans. That's much less than the actual health spending gap between young and old. Spending for those age 60 to 64 is four to five times greater than those 18 to 24. So, the young would overpay for insurance that—under the House bill—people must buy: Twenty-and thirtysomethings would subsidize premiums for fifty-and sixtysomethings. (Those 65 and over receive Medicare.)"

The Newsweek piece says this is in large part due to the insurmountable lobby from the AARP on this bill. The push has been schizophrenic with loving ads about "future generations" but Samuelson says turns behind close doors to screw the young with their pants on... er... um, undermine us.

"For example, the House health legislation improves Medicare's drug benefit. That would help the half of AARP members who are over 65. The other half, those between 50 and 64, could benefit from the skewed insurance premiums.

Although premium changes would apply mainly to people using insurance "exchanges," the differences would be substantial. A single person 55 to 64 might save $3,490, estimates an Urban Institute study. By contrast, single people in their 20s and early 30s might pay about $600 to $1,100 more. For the young, the extra cost might be larger, says economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute, because the House bill would require them to purchase fairly generous insurance plans rather than cheaper catastrophic coverage that might better suit their needs"

Let me be clear, I don't mind paying my fair share, a percentage based on what I'm make for a living. Indeed, when I'm in a position where I'm making a good living, I don't mind paying a little extra, I do take issue with paying 4 times my share. Samuelson remarks this comes at a particularly difficult time for youth with our unemployment rate at nearly double the national average and average college debt over $20,000 post-graduation. But this is what happens when you don't have anyone lobbying on your behalf and a multimillion dollar organization lobbying on behalf of older Americans.

And lets not pit the young against the old - I take care of my grandfather as much as I can afford to, and sometimes he takes care of me. When he gets even older, I'll be the one shouldered with him 100% because he has nothing other than Social Security to take care of him. And when my mom is older, she'll have savings to take care of her, but her 401k took quite a hit with the rest of them.

The point is, I don't mind paying for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid - I like these programs. The AARP should be ashamed of pitting my generation against theirs and shouldering us with everything when there are far more able bodied people to contribute - like .. oh the corporations that got a tax cut in 1983 when Social Security got looted the first time and shifted to the shoulders of youth. But wait - the Chamber of Commerce has a pretty substantial lobby as well, so again it moves to those who have no one to speak for them on The Hill.

It shouldn't be an either/or game with the AARP; they are building enemies rather than allies. Both generations want Social Security and both want health care - why can't we each agree that the people that should be shouldered with paying for it are the super rich who can afford it - or better Lou Dobbs - and the corporations who have been given more loopholes in tax code that you could drive a Metro train through.

Oh, forget it, we are getting screwed. Until we have a lobby as powerful as the AARP we'll continue to get undermined as a generation. Even after electing the President we've showed that we don't matter nearly as much as organizations like the Chamber of Commerce or the AARP when it comes to his policies. I think the only solution other than unmaking the power of lobbyists, is to develop or own lobby that can be as persuasive as the others. Sadly, its the only way today to be effective in enacting policy that is more fair.

That and go full on single payer health care.

This morning I got an email from myImpact.org announcing that they'd received support from the Peterson Foundation and Mobilize.org for a social media project they intend to do. This was announced at the Mobilize.org event "Exploring the Millennial Generation’s Return on Investment" a conference announced earlier this year when Mobilize announced their $1million grant from the Peterson Foundation.

William Greider wrote in The Nation earlier this year about the Looting of Social Security, describing very specifically the plan among Wall Street and Banking elites who are pushing the idea of fiscal responsibility as part of policy. Fiscal responsibility is a well tested phrase that everyone can get behind - because everyone agrees that our country should be responsible with its money. . . but Greider says that this is a backdoor swindle on anyone who has paid into Social Security

"These players are promoting a tricky way to whack Social Security benefits, but to do it behind closed doors so the public cannot see what's happening or figure out which politicians to blame. The essential transaction would amount to misappropriating the trillions in Social Security taxes that workers have paid to finance their retirement benefits. This swindle is portrayed as "fiscal reform." In fact, it's the political equivalent of bait-and-switch fraud."

His piece is extensive, and outlines the ways in which the rich want to use funding for Social Security to cut taxes to corporations and upper-income wage earners and a huge tax increase imposed on working people that he says is similar to the 1983 tax

"the payroll tax rate supporting Social Security--the weekly FICA deduction--was raised substantially, supposedly to create a nest egg for when the baby boom generation reached retirement age."

There is a kindred spirit in young people with this message, because since the 1980's the Millennial Generation has heard a consistent message about Social Security being too small to support the Baby Boomer Generation. Most young people don't think it will be there for them (Disclaimer: It will be), so this is a great group of people to begin organizing around "entitlement reform" to unmake Social Security and bait the young against the old to screw us all.

The article received a response from the Peterson Foundation itself directly targeting the idea of "entitlements" and "fiscal responsibility." But, Greider responded to the letter saying

"if you read his letter closely, he more or less confirms what I wrote about the establishment's assault on Social Security and other entitlement programs.

"I said they want to loot Social Security. He says it's already been looted. I said they are trying to evade the regular processes of representative democracy. He says Congress is "broken" and so cannot be trusted to make sound decisions in a timely manner."

Mobilize prides itself in being an "all partisan" organization, rather than a non-partisan organization which is what many youth groups are. When they promote progressive values I personally celebrate it, when they promote right-wing ideas, I will not. I had no idea that myImpact.org was also aligned with this kind of ideology, and I was so disappointed to receive the email from them this morning celebrating the Peterson Foundation's involvement, and accepting donations from them.

But this is the second problem, there's no funding for the youth movement. If you've read Mike Connery's book Youth to Power then you've read about the major donors that invested 5-10 years ago, respectively, in progressive youth outreach, young voters, and organizations that promote the civic participation and dedication of the Millennial Generation.

I'm sad to say that those donors have almost entirely dried up. Many are funding different projects, some have gone more partisan, some have gone less partisan only funding organizations that do voter registration and civic engagement but not issues, and others have simply stopped giving either because of the economic recession or a lack of interest.

The result is a ton of youth organizations doing groundbreaking work in states and across the country that can't get funded or whose budgets have been slashed so considerably that the outreach has suffered. The funders that are still active in the youth movement, those rare loyal leaders, are so few that we as a community are wrestling over any dime we can get.

So when there is a major foundation like Peterson willing to bankroll the entire organization with a $1million check, an organization must choose whether or not to sell their soul to keep the doors open.

This will continue to be the standard until we as a progressive movement decide to invest in our future. Right wing groups specifically invest in their youth with leadership training, job placement, think takes, and candidate recruitment. Connery wrote on Talking Points Memo last year about the trend beginning in the 1970's when the

"Young America’s Foundation, the most well-funded conservative youth group, with an average annual budget of around $9 million, was revitalized, and new organizations like Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute, which has trained upwards of 50,000 conservative activists on an average annual budget of $7 million, were getting their start.

Within the Republican Party itself, the College Republicans also experienced a revitalization at this time. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the number of College Republican chapters climbed from a nadir of 250 during the Johnson administration to over 1,100 by the time Reagan was in office.

By 2003, there were over a dozen leadership and training nonprofits in the conservative youth movement, and they receive upwards of $48 million a year in funding from 75 different conservative foundations. More importantly, their was not cyclical (ie election-based), but steady, providing a measure of stability on which to build and sustain their operations for years. Together, these organizations train hundreds if not thousands of conservatives a year, almost the entire cost of which is subsidized for the trainees."

I'll say it again, if we don't invest in our future today, there won't be a future to invest in, and more and more youth groups will be forced to accept compromising donations from conservative groups looking to creatively make inroads to the progressive movement. Social Security will be just the beginning of the end.

YPNation has announced in a recent release that will host its inaugural event at 8PM Wednesday, Oct. 28 at George Washington University's Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration that will engaging Young Professionals across the nation in a live Webcast on what it says is "America's unsustainable fiscal trajectory."

"Marc, Nicola and Ethan bring three distinct viewpoints to the table," said YPNation President & Publisher Michael Eisenstadt. "They and the rest of our dynamic team of leaders are committed to establishing common ground, building consensus, and finding ways for Young Professionals across the country to work together to solve the very unique challenges and opportunities ahead. YPNation is leading the national conversation among Young Professionals and the event will highlight our commitment to fostering a discussion respectful of diverse opinions."

Ethan Pollack was also one of the panelists at the Better Deal conference talking about how young people shouldn't worry about social security because it will be there for us, better explaining the national debt, and encouraging us not to believe the hype we hear about entitlement programs. One interesting factoid he said is that the Peterson Foundation gives huge grants to organizations the push such hype and fears about the debt and Social Security not being available for youth. He encourages youth to read up and think for yourself.

I will also note that I was the only person in the room that said I believe Social Security would be there for me. My reasoning was in large part due to the AARP lobby's power in Congress... rather than numbers...

Enjoy the short video as well as the discussion at YPNation's forum.

Continuing our coverage of attempts by conservatives to wage generational warfare on the issue of entitlements, I'd encourage everyone to read this opinion piece by Robert Kuttner in today's Washington Post. As the President's suddently-low-key entitlement summit is underway today, Kuttner skillfully pulls apart the disingenuous arguments of so-called deficit hawks and tries to drive a stake into the heart of the "generational theft" meme:

The deficit hawks' story also contends that we are sacrificing our children's future by too much (deficit) spending on the elderly. In fact, today's young adults are already falling out of the middle class because of the high costs of the investments we don't adequately finance socially -- child care, college tuition and health insurance. But fiscal conservatives seldom call for increased investment in the young. Today's young, of course, will be tomorrow's retirees, and they will need social insurance, too.

The overall bottom line? The economy we bequeath to our children has everything to do with getting growth back on track and almost nothing to do with imagined future deficits.

Also worth checking out today is a new project of Demos and the Century Foundation: The Fiscal High Road. It's a data-rich site meant to push back on the misleading arguments and generational claims made by the Petersen Foundation and other "entitlement reformers." Here's a quick slideshow they put together explaining the status of three distinct programs - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - that are often disingenuously lumped together under the term "entitlements."

As an aside, while I think this slide show has some great graphs and data in it, and I'm glad to see Demos and the Century Foundation pushing these ideas, they might be better served repackaging this data in a short video/animation (like this) rather than as a Power Point presentation.

Speaking of conservative talking points aimed at scaring youth about future debt, MSNBC's First Read is reporting that the Peter Petersen Foundation is set to launch a $1 million ad blitz about the need for entitlement reform:

As the Senate debates an economic stimulus plan whose price tag could come close to $900 billion, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation -- a non-partisan group created to bring awareness to the nation's rising spending and entitlement costs -- is launching an ad campaign [pdf] to urge the Obama White House and Congress to address long-term fiscal challenges.

That campaign began today with a print advertisement in the Washington Post and Roll Call. "Today's economic crisis is just the tip of the iceberg," the ad says, with the picture of a gigantic iceberg. "We must also focus on a much larger yet less visible threat: the $56 trillion in liabilities and unfunded retirement and health care obligations (that’s $483,000 per U.S. household), and the dangerous reliance on foreign lenders, that threaten our ship of state."

Tomorrow, Peterson Foundation president Dave Walker -- along with Sens. Kent Conrad (D) and George Voinovich (R), and Reps. Frank Wolf (R) and Jim Cooper (D) -- will hold a press conference to announce the group's full plans for a $1 million-plus advertising campaign.

Petersen has long been an opponent of entitlements and a promoter of generational warfare narratives. Most recently, his foundation was behind the production and distribution of IOUSA, a scare-tastic look at America's debt and entitlement programs that was thoroughly debunked as one-sided and misleading by the Center for Economic Policy Research.

Entitlement reform and debt will be the wedge issues that Republicans try to use to divide the Millennial Generation and the Democratic Party. This new ad blitz by the Petersen Foundation is probably laying the groundwork for those arguments.

Here's three things worth looking at, but not really meriting a full blog post:

• Kay Steiger at Pushback reminds us that today is veterans day with this excellent post about three major veterans issues.
• The Center for American Progress takes note of Millennials' pro-government philosophy and concern with the economy. There's no new data here, but this report does pull together the most relevant strands from a variety of reports they issued earlier in the year. It's a good Cliff's Note/summary of all that work.
• Black Youth Vote is prepping for a conference in D.C. this week to "train young leaders and activists on how to impact public policy and hold elected officials accountable." BYV is a strange group to me. They're never very high on my radar and I don't know a thing about what they did this year. They are very disconnected from the other threads of youth organizing - at least the ones that I'm familiar with. Yet they always pop their heads back up now and again. Maybe they need a better communications team.
• The Center for Economic and Policy Research has done a good job debunking the anti-social safety net film IOUSA. Here's their latest effort.

Let the pandering to young voters begin:

Only problem is, young voters don't consider this a voting issue and won't buy it in the face of an alternative argument from the Obama camp. But by all means, Sen. McCain, please keep trashing the social safety net.

It's common knowledge that Social Security is "the third rail" of politics, but this year it is doubly true for youth organizations. We're in the middle of what may be the most important election in our lifetime and Democrats stand a damn good chance of not only winning the Presidency, but of capturing sizable majorities in both chambers of congress that could virtually guarantee a progressive policy reformation not seen since the New Deal or the Great Society.

In election after election, young voters are choosing Democratic candidates over Republicans by large margins. On issue after issue, young voters hold progressive stands on how to solve the problems that affect our nation. Except on the issue of Social Security.

A recent report by the Center for American Progress and Demos found that 74% of Millennials are supportive of plans to privatize social security compared to 41% of adults over 60. That's the bad news. The good news is that this is less about their ideology than their particular stage of life. It's common for younger voters to feel less secure about social security (and their prospects for receiving it when they retire), and thus be open to more ideas as to how best we can "fix" the perceived problem.

Here's some more good news: according to that same report, compared with previous generations, Millennials are more open to the government spending money to stabilize social security. It's not that Millennials aren't progressive on Social Security - at this point they aren't anything except looking for an answer, and not even very hard at that. According to a February Rock the Vote poll (pdf), only 4% of Millennials rank Social Security as the most important issue that will determine how they cast their ballot.

Nevertheless, it is the one sole chink in the armor that conservatives can exploit if they want to make inroads among youth. John McCain is already out on the stump exploiting this, speaking out of both sides of his mouth on the issue of privatizing Social Security. You can bet that there will be even more attempts by Republicans to scare young voters about the program's long-term fiscal stability as we get closer to the election.

That's why it's really disheartening to see youth organizations like Mobilize.org, Rock the Vote, and the Roosevelt Institution engaging conservatives on the issue and providing ideological cover to conservative groups who want to privatize the social safety net that has served us so well for so long.

On Monday, June 16th, these and other youth organizers, along with a number of conservative and "nonpartisan" policy types, will convene in Washington for the Youth Entitlement Summit. The name alone - entitlement - should ring alarm bells as a conservative frame, as should the leading sponsor organization, Americans for Generational Equality (AGE) - a conservative outfit that has promotes "intergenerational strife" and argues for the privatization of social security. Founded in 1986, it closed up shop in 1990 only to reopen it's doors - and PR machine - in 2006.

The conference claims "non partisanship," and a spirited discussion of the issues, but if that is really true, why are there no progressive economic luminaries like Jared Bernstein addressing the attendees? Why is the Center for American Progress and the Economic Policy Institute nowhere to be seen in the list of partners? Instead, the agenda boasts scholars from the Brookings, Heritage and Hoover foundations and the panels all take on the frame of "X program in crisis." Hardly a fair and balanced representation of the issues.

We're on the verge of the first progressive majority in decades. Social Security's problems - to the extent that it has any - are minor at best and decades in the future. There is no rush to fix this "problem," and if we can all wait another 6 months, the solution we find is likely to be much better or all Americans. Collaborating with conservative idealogues, even sitting at the table with them at this point is pointless at best and damaging at worst -- to the coming electoral wave and Democratic support among young voters, and to setting the agenda when we have a Democratic government in 2009.

Youth organizers beware! Stay off the third rail of politics and don't play the conservative's game. We have nothing to gain by engaging them on this issue until AFTER the November election.

Yesterday in USA Today, Republican operative David Frum published an Op-Ed acknowledging the Republican Party's huge loss of support from young voters, and outlining a four-point plan to recapture the youth vote and revive the days of Reagan and Bush Sr.

Frum gets a few things right. Millennials are the most anti-Republican age group in the electorate, that position is a response to the failures of the Bush Administration to adequately address any number of social, economic, and geopolitical problems, the dominance of Christian conservatives and their culture war values on choice and GLBT rights also plays a part, as does the fact that the Millennial generation is the most diverse, tolerant generation in history and the Republican Party is not at all diverse or tolerant.

But Frum is smoking something if he thinks his four-point plan can turn things around for the GOP.

Three of his proposals amount to nothing more than putting a kinder, gentler face on policies that a majority of youth roundly reject. I see little room for a pro-environment, pro-choice, multilateralist generation that believes in the power and obligation of government to protect and provide opportunity for its citizens to embrace a unilateral foreign policy, green washing environmental policy or a more compassionate anti-choice agenda.

But one recommendation sticks out among the rest and it deserves closer scrutiny.

Think Social Security taxes, not income taxes.

Today's young voters are paying much more in Social Security taxes than in income taxes — and contributing much more into Social Security than they will ever see out of it.

Republicans took a beating on the Social Security issue in 2005. But the issue is not going away. And Barack Obama's solution — taxing more income for Social Security — is neither workable nor popular. Personal accounts offer hope for personal wealth to a generation that is increasingly anxious about its economic future. With a relatively small subsidy — $300 per year for workers earning less than $40,000 — a revived Republican personal account plan could guarantee that every American worker would retire a millionaire, even if they never earn more in their lives than minimum wage.

Republicans will always face overwhelming disadvantages among blacks and Hispanics. President Bush's attempts to woo Hispanics via lax immigration policies disastrously backfired, alienating white Republicans without achieving gains among Hispanics.

But we can talk to young blacks and Hispanics as young people, who share economic interests with an entire generation of overtaxed young workers, regardless of race.

This is a common narrative heard not just among conservatives, who use it as their supposed "Ace in the hole" when talking to or about young voters, but also among progressives. During my book tour this question has come up a number of times. Yesterday at the Roosevelt Institution conference, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, the Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute, made reference to an alleged conservative view of Social Security reform among Millennials. I myself have fallen into the trap of believing that young people consider Social Security broken and privatization as the most viable option for "fixing" it.

After extensive conversations with some fellow youth leaders this morning, and a little bit of reading, I no longer believe that to be the case.

Back in 2005, the last time that this issue came up, Rock the Vote teamed up with the AARP to poll the electorate on the issue. Contrary to popular belief, they found that most young people did not support Social Security privatization if it entailed the dismantling of other parts of the social safety net:

Most Americans in the 18 to 39 age group, for example, say that they would flat-out oppose the accounts if, for example, it means that cuts to their guaranteed Social Security benefits would be so severe that they could not make up the difference with private accounts (70 percent say they would oppose) or that diverting some Social Security payroll taxes means "massive new federal debt in order to pay current benefits" (63 percent say they would oppose).

PEW found similar results at the time, and also noted that the more young people knew about the details of privatization, the less likely they were to support it.

A number of young activists wrote about the subject at the time. Dana Goldstein, then of Campus Progress, actually debated a pro-privatization student and found that the pro-privatization student group, Students for Saving Social Security, was little more than an astroturf group.

At the time, Matt Singer, now of Forward Montana, and Heather McGhee, who is now working on Demos's Better Deal Conference, also wrote critiques of the supposed youth support for social security privatization.

Lest you think that my outdated statistics from 2005 are no longer relevant, let's remember that in 2005, a number of Gen Xers were still in the 18 - 29 catagory (and they made up a majority of the 18 - 36 cohort). Gen Xers have consistently been far more conservative than Millennials. If anything, these numbers have likely seen a vast improvement. Again, Rock the Vote's poll data can provide some help here.

In February of 2008, Rock the Vote released a new poll of young voters (18 - 29) (pdf). When asked what their top concerns were for the country, only 2% responsed that Social Security was one of their largest concerns. 0% of African Americans agreed that Social Security was a major problem, and only 5% of Hispanics. Now granted, there are margin of error issues in these numbers, but the point is, the numbers are so small that it is hard to see how this could turn out to be the Republican's "Ace in the Hole" to win back young voters.

At best, what we have in Social Security is the one issue in which we may actually have to engage the Republicans in serious debate among young voters. But research shows that once young voters become educated as to the details, and the consequences, of privatization, they readily abandon the concept. Considering the conditions of the stock market recently, this is a debate I'm more than willing to have.