Rick Santorum on Social Security and Abortion

Speaking of American Embarrassments, along comes Rich Santorum.

However, doesn’t anyone remember (I’m looking at you Adam) the “1983 Social Security reforms that were signed into law by President Reagan. At the time, the program was genuinely on the verge of a crisis, with the payroll taxes financing the system months away from falling short of the amount needed to pay beneficiaries. The bi-partisan solution entailed accelerating payroll tax increases, a six-month delay in the annual cost-of-living adjustment, a phased-in hike in the retirement age (which amounts to across-the-board benefit cuts), and the imposition of income taxes on some Social Security benefits.

In addition to covering the immediate shortfall, those changes greatly strengthened the financing of the program so that it would be sustainable decades into the future as the large cohort of Baby Boomers retired. Under the reforms, working age Baby Boomers started paying taxes in excess of benefits owed to current retirees.”

http://takingnote.tcf.org/2011/03/five-social-security-non-myths.html

Eliminating the wage tax cap would help too, and without the woe-is-us-‘cause-of-abortion drama.

The population of the planet has more than doubled in my lifetime. This is clearly a result of too many abortions.

For Santorum, they’re the wrong nationalities and skin tone.

Given Santorum’s man-on-dog position, I wonder if his beliefs about spaying / neutering parallel those about abortion.

Did someone mention to Senator Santorum that the rate of abortion has been going down or leveled off in the past few years (though it spiked recently)?

If we need more workers for the Baby Boomers, we need them now, not in 21 years when most of the Baby Boomers will be dead. Besides, we had a mini baby boom so we will have a few more workers in a decade or so, when all of the children of the baby boomers will be in their prime working years.

However, we do have an influx of undocumented workers, who could and should be paying Social Security taxes. I am sure they would more than willing to pay to be given the privilege for working and living in this country.

“Metuses” have rights, too, y’know

“Santorum is correct that you can accurately describe Social Security’s long-term projected solvency problems as the gap between smaller younger generations and a very large baby boom generation headed toward retirement.”
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This leaves one to believe we can fix social security for all time. We can’ do that. There will always be problems with social security because its a retirement system based on taxes from the economy.

Of course decon this is the answer. But, that means raising the payroll tax on those that can afford it. Horrors!

‘Santorum is correct that you can accurately describe Social Security’s long-term projected solvency problems as the gap between smaller younger generations and a very large baby boom generation headed toward retirement.’
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Adam,
Actually, Santorum is not correct. You appear to be repeating the ‘Social Security is a ponzi scheme’ canard.
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Ever since the 1983 Social Security reforms the baby boomers have not only been paying for their parents Social Security but also contributing for their own. That’s why Social Security has been taking in more than it pays out for years. That money is savings that’s owed to the people who paid it.
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Unfortunately, the budget has been raided to give tax breaks and giveaways to businesses and the wealthy. The solution not to cheat Social Security recipients out of what they’ve paid for and are owed. The solution is to get businesses and the wealthy to pay their fair share.

Has anyone read just a bit deeper into Santorum’s commentary?
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1. In answer to that very last question:
Why not hire more American kids?!?!!?! If you’re looking for workers, there’s a bunch of ‘em that are in the parking lots of every mall, idled, due to lack of work!
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2. In Santorum’s mind, to breed faster is a solution. It brings up two additional questions:
a. Just who gets to do the “breeding”?
b. Isn’t this a rehash of the Bush Doctrine concept of encouraging breeding to promote American Exceptionalism a la http://www.newamericancentury.org‘s numerous economic papers on the subject?
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Ok, the last thing I will say is that I’m not against immigration reform, but we also have to resolve the problem of the high unemployment among American youth that is exacerbated by illegal immigrants displacing them in the low-end labor marketplace.
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Using abortion as a vehicle seems to smack of the same ridiculous arguments they’ve made about how they are really the saviors of the Black community – which is a total sham.
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The worst of it is, however, how close we are traipsing around the edges of something far, far nastier than any of these issues.
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Can anyone guess what it is?
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The sorry part of the whole thing is that there are several deserving issues, SS solvency, immigration reform, and others that are getting horribly tainted by people like Santorum who have this mindset.

…but there are millions of people in the world who would love nothing more than to move to America and work.

Hell, there’s millions of Americans already living here that would like to do the same.

…isn’t there a more immediate, direct answer?

Yes. It’s called ‘Raising or Removing the Payroll Tax Cap.‘

There’s so many more options than just waiting for more babies to be born and grow up.

Hell, there’s millions of Americans already living here that would like to do the same.
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FTW!

Rats! That was supposed to be ‘The solution is not to cheat…’.

OT, Sports Edition:

Fiesta Bowl chairman’s criminal activity could spell the end of the B[C]S.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/football/ncaa/03/29/fiesta-bowl-junker/index.html?eref=sihp

Santorum does not deserve the scrutiny he receives here. He is a religious nut case, not a public policy expert. Even his religious views are skewed. As big an issue as prohibition of abortion in his world, is prohibition of any birth control whatever, including use of prophylactics. If he thinks population levels are an issue, he needs to reorder his crusade agenda and preach to his congregation of the need to observe that religious prohibition.

Santorum’s logic is flawed. Each person is a net producer and consumer and cancels him or herself out on average. If we produce more children, we have to take care of them as children, and then they in turn need to live off retirement of some kind regardless of whether from private or public source. The factor of genuine importance is ratio of consuming years to ratio of producing years in a person’s life. If people live longer past retirement, they just have to come up with more to service that consumption time, period.

Anyway, more population is a net drag because increased consumption means higher commodity costs, increased cost of new construction and roads when we otherwise could just upkeep existing, extra pressure on the environment, etc. Most appealing though to conservatives and their interests: population growth means more labor supply for the demand, depressing wages (yet increasing employment) and higher, increasing land and property costs (good for speculators, bad for almost everyone else.) So I can see the appeal to such people, even beyond “religious” reasons. (“Fill the Earth” could be considered a completion-based concept anyway, not to keep pouring ,,,)

“Fine minds make find distinctions.”

BTW, similar fallacies about the supposed benefits of more people are given by commenters here. For example, the pretense that more consumers means more business: but these extra people just cancel themselves out “going in and going out.” Think: twice as many people and all the same roles and interactions, just doubled up. It can’t be an advantage.

Santorum belongs in a mental sanitarium.

Just another far fight anti middle class, anti abortion maggot.

If the left does not make mojor gains in the 2012 elections, our nation will soon be a third world ‘banana republic’