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The oldest Baby Boomers are turning fifty.
[Yes!!! Die, you disco bastards! Die! Die!]
(Woops. That was Kip, my evil Gen X clone. Sorry.)
Soon, America will have more folks over 65 than ever before.
Social Security works pretty darn well. Only about 10% of the elderly live in poverty these days. In 1960, that figure was over one in three.
However, many analysts believe Social Security will collapse sometime around 2029, shortly after a glut of Baby Boomers retire and overload the system.
[That's why we should kill anyone driving a Range Rover now, while we still can!]
(Sorry. Kip keeps grabbing the keyboard.)
Not to worry, the government says. A Senate commission claims to have discovered that the current Consumer Price Index overstates inflation. They recommend a change in how the CPI is calculated, reducing the current figure from 3.2 to 2.1 percent.
Washington actuaries claim that, coincidentally, this little adjustment will also stabilize Social Security [and] save the government $166 billion over the next ten years, while reducing monthly payments to current retirees by only [eight bucks] in 1998.
And if you buy that one, you probably think static electricity can bring down a 747.
The commission's numbers are severely cooked. There isn't room here to go into heavy detail, but you can see at a glance that they sound too good to be true.
The big trick lies in compounding that little 1.1% change. Assuming that the reduction remains constant, ten years later that's a 10% cut. A decade later, it's a 19% cut. And so on.
Since Social Security is indexed to the CPI, the younger you are, the more you lose. If you're 30, this sneaky little maneuver cuts your future Social Security payments by about a third.
[Boomers must pay for these crimes! Track down the cast of Thirtysomething and beat them with mallets! Feed Joan Lunden! Drag Sting into the desert, cover him with fire ants, and play a syncopated bass riff to his squeals!]
(Sorry. Kip's in a mood because he can't get Gwen from No Doubt to return his emails. As if. I just threw a fresh burrito in his dish. He'll quiet down.)
Tax brackets are also indexed to the CPI. A downward revision means that the brackets will rise more slowly than your actual wages, eventually "creeping" you into a higher bracket. So it's a tax hike as well.
Finally, since wage increases will now appear to exceed inflation, shysters in both parties can grandstand in 1998 about how much better off we all are.
Sweet deal.
The Clinton administration is getting tips on smooth-talking this rip-off from Burson-Marsteller, the same PR firm that handled Bovine Growth Hormone, Bhopal, and the Exxon Valdez. Their advice? "Explain to the average person that they are not being denied anything, but are only getting what they are entitled to." Classic B-M.
Where will our money go? To help trim a national debt created largely by huge corporate tax favors, subsidies, and arms contracts. So, once again, this government is literally robbing the poor to pay the rich.
This CPI scam grossly contradicts the will of the American people.
November exit polls showed that protecting Social Security is more important to voters than a balanced budget, and improving education and health care is a far higher priority than gold-plating the Pentagon.
And even if the budget [was] America's main concern, that's still no excuse for waiting until Christmas -- when many people are too busy and light-hearted to notice -- to furtively raise taxes and cut Social Security for every single American.
While some careful adjustments to the system may well be necessary, Clinton's pending boast of "saving" Social Security -- simply by slashing it -- is all too predictable. After all, this is the same guy who "reformed" Aid to Families with Dependent Children by abolishing it.
Ben Franklin once said that nothing is certain but death and taxes. Artificially depressing the CPI will do a fine job of bringing America's elderly more of both.
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Bob Harris is a political humorist who has spoken at over 275 colleges nationwide. [The Scoop] is archived at www.goodthink.com.
Original file name: THE SCOOP- How a Creep Raises Y
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