Comments on: More Cliff Notes–Moving to the Chained CPI or Raising Medicare Eligibility Age: Now’s Not the Time

By: coberly

coberly — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 05:03:23 +0000

well, none of this makes sense.

Social Security contributes nothing to the deficit. No cuts are needed. The workers pay for their own SS. If they want to increase their benefits to cover the longer retirement implied by longer life expectancy it would cost them an extra eighty cents per week each year… while their wages are going up eight dollars per week each year.

there is no point in “more accurate” cpi. The workers are paying for their own benefits.. if they want more when they retire, they can get it by paying more (really saving more) through the payroll tax. And if they want to retire at 65 (say) instead of working until they can’t, who are “we” to stop them if they pay for it themselves?

Medicare would work out very similarly if we hadn’t turned it partly into welfare in a misguided attempt to save the workers a few dollars a month while they have the money, and cut Medicare to “balance the budget”, forcing those workers to have to scramble to find the money to pay what Medicare no longer covers.

There is a need for welfare, but it’s pretty stupid to use welfare when the people can pay for their own needs, using the government to manage pay as you go insurance.

By: Monique Morrissey

Monique Morrissey — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 03:23:13 +0000

Hi Jared–
Given CBPP’s stance on chaining, we didn’t even ask if you would sign our experts/economists statement against the chained CPI-U, but now I wish we had!
Best,
Monique

By: wendy beck

wendy beck — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:07:22 +0000

Like Fred Donaldson above I, too, thank you for your reasonable and humane ideas on the budget. The chained CPI was one of the major sticking points in my group of library friends who studied the Simpson-Bowles suggestions. I would like to see more work on the CPI-E for fairness to the elderly.

By: Fred Donaldson

Fred Donaldson — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:00:50 +0000

Thank you for some common sense fair proposals, and let us hope these can be placed in stone and not used as bargaining chips for the further destruction of a retirement system that pays about 60% of what we see in other countries, and the rape of a health system that already costs Medicare folks thousands of dollars in mandated premiums, supplemental insurance and co-pays.

No other country in the world, including dictatorships, has so little respect for the worker and the elderly. Is this what they teach at the elite schools or is it an “acquired taste” at academic meeting populated by too many conservative (corporate-financed) think tanks?

This is government for the people, not for the milking of the people, and not for the increase of wealth in a few pockets, but for the general public weal.