I promised to point you towards the blog that’s publishing my report on the Frances Perkins Center’s discussion of Social Security. That blogification is on hold pending the renovation of their blog. Social Security seems like such an unequivocally boring topic.
But it’s not.
On December 3 I joined a near–capacity crowd in the Porter Auditorium in Damariscotta, Maine, to hear from two prominent experts on the securing of Social Security.
 |
| Christopher Breiseth |
One of the panelists, historian Christopher Breiseth, was president and CEO of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, after a distinguished career as a university president. The other panelist was Kirsten Downey, an award-winning WaPo journalist and author; she also was a senior staff writer to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
 |
| Kirsten Downey |
Breiseth and Downey have co-edited a new book, “A Promise to All Generations,” which includes contributors Karenna Gore Schiff, James K. Galbraith, James Roosevelt, Jr., and Pres. Barack Obama, along with others of reduced renown. Sale of the book supports the Frances Perkins Center; copies can be obtained from the Center’s main office in Damariscotta or by mail, and the book’s well worth having.
Why would anyone spend an afternoon talking about Social Security, which everyone knows is an ancient entitlement that’s about to go bankrupt, and is acting now as a sea anchor on the US economy? What we heard unequivocally from the experts was, these statements are simply not true.
The Social Security system is not an entitlement, (a benefit paid to anyone who meets a certain definition). Rather, it's a form of insurance funded by the people who benefit from it. The average amount of time a person pays into the Social Security system before obtaining benefits is between 37 and 38 years. As much as ill–informed politicians and lazy journalists enjoy repeating the word “entitlement,” those of us who benefit from Social Security are getting what we have paid for–market capitalism at its best.
Another canard popular in the political class is that there's no point in paying attention to Social Security since it will go out of business soon. This notion isn’t supported by the math. The Social Security system is not inside the federal budget; it’s a separate system funded by its future beneficiaries, much like any insurance or annuity policy. The system is currently worth about $2 trillion, which one suspects could inspire people in the financial sector and their politician playmates to seek control of Social Security’s money, under the noble–sounding label of privatization.
To give you some perspective on the size of the Social Security fund, it's almost double the amount of US debt held by China. Dr. Breiseth and Ms. Downey showed that while the Social Security system needs adjusting and revising, it's hardly teetering on the edge of anything, including bankruptcy.
The Social Security system, now 75 years old, is a result of the singular efforts of Frances Perkins. Ms. Perkins believed in members of society looking out for each other, and she promoted individuality and privacy–she even refused to provide her gender to the Census takers. And she was fierce in her insistence that Social Security numbers not be used for other purposes and by other agencies of government–a practice that’s sadly now commonplace.
 |
| Perkins Center E.D. Laura Fortman |
Christopher Breiseth and Kirstin Downey made a solid case that the Social Security system is a backbone of 21st-century American life and that it can be preserved and protected - and it will be, if organizations like the Frances Perkins Center do their part, and the rest of us don’t let the wily foxes loot our respective nest eggs.