×
Speaketh McCain:
"Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed."Everyone's quoting this, but I think the point of it is getting a bit lost: According to this comment, until today, or possibly sometime this week, John McCain did not know how Social Security worked. Just did not know. Wasn't aware. He seems to believe that at some other point in history, retiree benefits were paid for through taxes contributed by former workers, or possibly the retirees themselves. But, as Dean Baker says, "present-day retirees have always been paid their benefits from the taxes paid by current workers. That has been true from Social Security's inception." And it would remain true, incidentally, in the partial privatization plans that McCain and other conservatives favor: Those plans would still see Social Security funded out of payroll taxes, with current workers subsidizing current retirees.There are criticisms that people make of Social Security, most of them relating to a mismatch between the program's revenue and its future obligations. But McCain's comment is very different. It's like if lots of people made fun of one guy's car because it was broken down, ugly, and lacked headlights. Then one of the dimmer members of the group, sensing an opportunity to jump in, piped up with, "yeah, four wheels and an engine? What's with that!? When you gonna do something about that!?" Everyone would sort of look at the guy for a moment while they registered that this person didn't understand how a car worked. Now imagine that this person was applying to run an auto shop. And people were taking his application seriously. That's sort of the situation we're in.
