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1.0 out of 5 stars
Beyond slanted, filled with inexcusable errors, May 26, 2006
This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide(R) to Social Security (Paperback)
The decision here to give a one-star review is difficult because this volume contains some basic factual information possibly of use to some readers. The rating is nevertheless appropriate, however, because this volume contains so many inexcusable errors that even its factual information is called into question.
The biggest problems appear in the later chapters on the current Social Security debate. The problem is not the author's transparent bias against significant structural reform; she is entitled to her policy views. The problem is that the book misrepresents the essence of the Social Security debate in a way that will leave a reader badly misinformed. Worse, many of the assertions in this chapter are based on little more than partisan press releases, including many egregious errors that a modicum of diligence would have excluded from the book.
The basic issues in play in the Social Security debate are actually:
-- How much of the projected shortfalls should be resolved by additional revenues, and how much by constraining benefit growth.
-- The degree of progressivity there should be on both the benefit and the revenue sides.
-- Whether to continue with essentially a pay-as-you-go structure or whether to begin to incorporate advance funding.
-- Whether, if advance funding is incorporated, this should be accomplished through personally owned accounts or by collective government-owned savings and investment.
You would not understand the spectrum of serious policy issues from reading this book. Instead, the author describes the issue largely in terms of a false debate over "privatization."
The author's relentless emphasis on "privatization" is a clue to bias. "Privatization" is a word test-driven in political push polls, used to incite misunderstanding and fear. When people think of something being "privatized," they assume that it s being turned over to the private sector to run. But in reality, most advocates of Social Security personal accounts oppose privatizing the system. The federal Thrift Savings Plan personal account system, in which Members of Congress, Republican and Democrat alike, participate, is not considered to be "privatized." It is administered by the federal government and works very well.
In presenting the players in the debate, the author names three organizations as representing the "pro-privatization" group, including the 2001 Moynihan-Parsons Commission appointed by President Bush. But this Commission chose not to recommend privatization. Instead it followed the lead of the centrist group on the Clinton Administration's 1994-96 Advisory Council, in advocating publicly administered personal accounts.
Readers familiar with the Social Security debate would be forgiven for laughing out loud at the book's depiction of the AARP as the "fence straddler," the "middle of the road." AARP occupies a distant extreme in the Social Security debate, at one far one end of the spectrum on the revenue/benefit question, and also in their dogmatic opposition to personal accounts. AARP has run TV ads equating the introduction of accounts with the destruction of someone's home. This book quotes two AARP heads (Deets and Novelli) attacking the Moynihan-Parsons Commission simply for their having described the Social Security problem in the same language used by the Social Security Trustees, the General Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Concord Coalition. Thus AARP is not only at one end of the policy debate, but it has refused to accept the factual analysis employed by the non-partisan scoring agencies.
The actual spectrum of views on Social Security reaches from advocates on the right of true privatization (e.g., some within the Cato Institute), through the center, wherein reside most of the bipartisan proposals that would establish smaller, publicly administered personal accounts within the traditional Social Security system (e.g., the Moynihan-Parsons Commission, the National Commission on Retirement Policy, Kolbe-Stenholm, Simpson-Kerrey), and on the left, those who believe the program will be fine with only incremental reforms.
The author quotes exclusively in this chapter from this last group on the left. The sole quotes are from: Dean Baker, Alan Blinder, Horace Deets, Bill Novelli, Martha McSteen, Roger Hickey, and Dallas Salisbury. Only one of these (Salisbury) is even close to the political center, is also a long-standing opponent of personal accounts. Epstein conspicuously bypasses the chance to explain the issues by quoting non-partisan sources, such as: The Social Security Trustees, CBO, GAO, or any of the recent bipartisan commissions or think tanks (such as the Concord Coalition or the Urban Institute.) You would never know, reading this book, that every bipartisan legislative proposal in the last decade has included personal accounts, while eschewing actual privatization.
This is not, however, the worst of it. The author is reckless with the facts in several more inexcusable ways.
For example, she describes the Kolbe-Stenholm personal account proposal as reducing progressivity and working primarily to the benefit of high-income people. Kolbe-Stenholm may be the one plan that experts from left to right agree is among the most progressive yet proposed, far more progressive than current law. Under Kolbe-Stenholm, benefits in the traditional system would be increased for low-income workers, the system would be balanced by changes that add additional progressivity, and even the personal accounts would be funded via a progressive formula. The CBO report on Kolbe-Stenholm is but one of many that attest that it would vastly increase progressivity. There is no excuse for missing this given the quantity of publicly-available information about Kolbe-Stenholm.
In another place, the text glibly states that in Chile, personal accounts are controlled by five companies that make "22 percent profits. . . . now you know why the investment companies are quickly jumping on the bandwagon. . . there's big money to be made." This is wrong for a couple of reasons. Less seriously, investment companies have been very reticent to become directly involved in the US debate, largely because they know that this charge will be made. But far more seriously, the personal accounts that have been proposed would not be administered as in the Chilean system, but rather as in the federal Thrift Savings Plan, in which administrative expenses are handled by the federal government. Factcheck.org has published an expose of the baselessness of this attack. Papers by CBO, the Clinton Administration Treasury Department, and the Moynihan-Parsons Commission all clearly explain why it is wrong.
Epstein examines the substantive issues only long enough to parrot various "straw man" arguments against reform. One example is when she quotes Alan Blinder in favor of the reality of the Trust Fund: "Blood would run in the streets if Wall Street believed that Treasury bonds were worthless." But neither the advocates of reform, nor the non-partisan scoring agencies argue that "Treasury bonds are worthless." To the contrary, President Bush's Social Security Commission wrote in its interim report that "the bonds in the Trust Fund will be honored."
The risk-free nature of government bonds doesn't change the point that the federal government cannot meaningfully advance fund Social Security by issuing bonds to itself, nor that real additional revenue will be required when the program enters cash deficits in 2017, Trust Fund or no Trust Fund. You cannot advance fund a set of retirement obligations by opening up a line of credit for yourself -- even if, to outsiders, your credit is perfectly good. The fact that Treasury bonds are a safe investment instrument when held by those outside the government is peripheral to the real point. If the safety of Treasury bonds were the real issue, all that would be needed to extend Social Security solvency indefinitely would be to print more bonds, a ludicrous suggestion.
At points, the book descends to the silly and the petty, uncritically repeating charges that have their origin in political press releases. Many of these could have been seen as false with just a little homework. For example:
The author writes that the 2001 Moynihan-Parsons Commission did most of their work "behind closed doors." In reality, the Commission was governed by the FACA act, and was required by law to hold each of their meetings in public, which they did. Not only were their meetings public, but the documents circulated among the Commission between meetings were always available for public review. The Commission kept an open book at its headquarters throughout its proceedings. Reporters could come in any day to see and copy any documents sent by commission members or staff to the rest of the commission. The charge that the commission was doing its work "behind closed doors" arose in a politically-motivated letter to the commission, publicly released for the purpose of discrediting its work. It deserves no place here.
Perhaps an even sillier example lies in the book's allegation that "all three proprivatization groups" (including the Moynihan-Parsons Commission) "are closely tied to the Cato Institute." This charge was a staple of some partisan talking points in 2001, eventually becoming the subject of a hit piece in the New Republic entitled, "The Cato Commission." It was motivated by the fact that some scholars at Cato have advocated true privatization, thus the association was a handy means of sowing fears of the bipartisan reform efforts. The New Republic article alleged that the Commission's interim report language (about the...
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