Social Security 101 (via Crooks and Liars)

Crooks and Liars is one of favorite blogs. This is a critical entry. It talks about the malicious propaganda we are all exposed to about Social Security and its trust fund. I wish everyone concerned with the issue would read this particular post.

James Pilant

From Crooks and Liars

<em>My career, pre-blogging, was as third-party administrator of employer-provided retirement plans. For years I was a certified practitioner, and I watched as private pensions were systematically dismantled, underfunded, and ultiimately converted to 401k plans subject to the whims of the market and unsophisticated investors. While owners might — MIGHT — have retired with adequate funds, workers almost never did. The one single thing that every worker could always count on at retirement was (and is) Social Security.

Yet it seems that conservative lies have taken hold to the extent that the truth is called a lie, while lies are called the truth. Once upon a time, that only happened in fiction. Now it’s real. So let’s talk about Social Security, what it is, and why you shouldn’t believe everything conservatives and their minions in the press tell you.