[Mb-civic] Little Black Lies

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Published on Friday, January 28, 2005 by the New York Times  
Little Black Lies  
by Paul Krugman 
  
Social Security privatization really is like tax cuts, or the Iraq war: the 
administration keeps on coming up with new rationales, but the plan 
remains the same. President Bush's claim that we must privatize Social 
Security to avert an imminent crisis has evidently fallen flat. So now he's 
playing the race card. 

This week, in a closed meeting with African-Americans, Mr. Bush asserted 
that Social Security was a bad deal for their race, repeating his earlier 
claim that "African-American males die sooner than other males do, which 
means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people." In 
other words, blacks don't live long enough to collect their fair share of 
benefits.

This isn't a new argument; privatizers have been making it for years. But 
the claim that blacks get a bad deal from Social Security is false. And Mr. 
Bush's use of that false argument is doubly shameful, because he's 
exploiting the tragedy of high black mortality for political gain instead of 
treating it as a problem we should solve.

Let's start with the facts. Mr. Bush's argument goes back at least seven 
years, to a report issued by the Heritage Foundation - a report so badly 
misleading that the deputy chief actuary (now the chief actuary) of the 
Social Security Administration wrote a memo pointing out "major errors in 
the methodology." That's actuary-speak for "damned lies."

In fact, the actuary said, "careful research reflecting actual work histories 
for workers by race indicate that the nonwhite population actually enjoys 
the same or better expected rates of return from Social Security" as whites.

Here's why. First, Mr. Bush's remarks on African-Americans perpetuate a 
crude misunderstanding about what life expectancy means. It's true that the 
current life expectancy for black males at birth is only 68.8 years - but that 
doesn't mean that a black man who has worked all his life can expect to die 
after collecting only a few years' worth of Social Security benefits. Blacks' 
low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and 
young adulthood. African-American men who make it to age 65 can expect 
to live, and collect benefits, for an additional 14.6 years - not that far short 
of the 16.6-year figure for white men.

Second, the formula determining Social Security benefits is progressive: it 
provides more benefits, as a percentage of earnings, to low-income 
workers than to high-income workers. Since African-Americans are paid 
much less, on average, than whites, this works to their advantage.

Finally, Social Security isn't just a retirement program; it's also a disability 
insurance program. And blacks are much more likely than whites to receive 
disability benefits. 

Put it all together, and the deal African-Americans get from Social Security 
turns out, according to various calculations, to be either about the same as 
that for whites or somewhat better. Hispanics, by the way, clearly do better 
than either.

So the claim that Social Security is unfair to blacks is just false. And the 
fact that privatizers keep making that claim, after their calculations have 
repeatedly been shown to be wrong, is yet another indicator of the 
fundamental dishonesty of their sales pitch.

What's really shameful about Mr. Bush's exploitation of the black death 
rate, however, is what it takes for granted.

The persistent gap in life expectancy between African-Americans and 
whites is one measure of the deep inequalities that remain in our society - 
including highly unequal access to good-quality health care. We ought to 
be trying to diminish that gap, especially given the fact that black infants 
are two and half times as likely as white babies to die in their first year.

Now nobody can expect instant progress in reducing health inequalities. 
But the benefits of Social Security privatization, if any, won't materialize 
for many decades. By using blacks' low life expectancy as an argument for 
privatization, Mr. Bush is in effect taking it as a given that 40 or 50 years 
from now, large numbers of African-Americans will still be dying before 
their time. 

Is this an example of what Mr. Bush famously called "the soft bigotry of 
low expectations?" Maybe not: it isn't particularly soft to treat premature 
black deaths not as a tragedy we must end but as just another way to push 
your ideological agenda. But bigotry - yes, that sounds like the right word. 

© 2005 New York Times Co.

###

Race and Social Security - Cynical 
Politics
Marcellus Andrews 
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/race_and_social_security_cy
nical_politics.php 
January 27, 2005
 
President Bush recently said that privatizing Social Security will 
really help blacks, because they don't live long enough to collect 
benefits through the current system. Marcellus Andrews, a fellow at 
the New America Foundation, says this is political posturing of the 
lowest degree. Conservative policies keep black people 
down—without decent schools, decent housing or access to health 
care—and this latest tactic is simply political manipulation in the 
name of social justice.

Marcellus Andrews is a Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Research 
Fellow at the New America Foundation.

You have to admire the Republican Party’s nerve. There was 
George Bush in late January, surrounded by 22 black people, 
arguing for Social Security privatization on the grounds that the 
current system is unfair to blacks because we don’t live long enough 
to collect much by way of benefits. A couple of days earlier, House 
Ways chair William Thomas, R-Calif., was suggesting that Social 
Security benefits might be adjusted so that people with short 
lifespans—black people—get their due from the system. 

This sort of shameless public theater is testimony to the deep 
contempt that Republicans have for black people, as well as the 
chutzpah of the right in their fight to win political warfare. It is 
breathtaking to see right-wing politicians who not long ago 
castigated black people as a lazy, dumb and immoral race of 
mindless welfare queens and street hoods suddenly champion 
Social Security in the name of racial justice. This would be 
funny—were it not so revolting.

Black people die sooner than whites because we are poorer than 
whites. Every thinking adult in this country knows why black people 
are poorer than whites, and why white conservatives have played 
such an important role in keeping black people in poverty. Millions 
of black children go to lousy schools, receive mediocre schooling, 
and are unable to compete for high-paying jobs or buy decent 
housing, health care or much else when they grow up. When black 
people turn to government for help, they are abused by 
conservatives for seeking a handout rather than pulling ourselves 
up by the bootstraps. 

The vast majority of black adults hate Republicans because the 
GOP has turned the denigration of black people into a fine political 
art, winning election after election by promising white Americans 
that they are tough enough to keep black hands out of the public till. 
What would cause Republicans to pretend that they care about 
people whom they have castigated for fun and political profit since 
the days of Ronald Reagan? 

There is a subtle and awful political game conservatives are playing. 
The Republicans are crystal clear about their intention to smash the 
last bits of the liberals’ program for equality to smithereens. There is 
no way that conservatives will use government to promote real 
equal opportunity in any area of American life, so black people had 
better get used to the fact that our lives as second-class workers in 
the American economy is a more or less permanent condition so 
long as the right is in power. 

Taking up the cause of black people in the Social Security fight 
serves three purposes. First, it makes a deeply racist political party 
look more moderate to some of its queasy supporters who like low 
taxes and small government but who are unhappy about racial 
inequality. Second, this playacting offers black people a break in a 
world that is otherwise quite indifferent to their needs. Third, the 
Republicans can throw down a challenge to Democrats whose lack 
of power means they have nothing to offer black people. 

This last reason is the most important. The majority of black people 
in the American economy are trapped between a global economy 
that has ever less need for their labor and a hostile right-wing 
political movement that uses its power to inflict ever greater injury 
upon them. The Democrats do not have a clue about how to 
improve the well-being of working-class and poor people, nor do 
they seem likely to retake power anytime soon. When the 
Republicans throw black people chump change—whether private 
accounts in Social Security or school vouchers —and the 
Democrats have nothing on offer, they hope to show up their 
opponents as impotent complainers. 

This is brilliant, cynical, hate-filled politics. It is also ugly testimony 
about the uses of racial inequality by conservatives as they try to 
turn black people into a cudgel to smash the legacy of the New 
Deal. This sort of thing will go on as long as liberals and 
progressives fail to craft a new politics of equal opportunity and 
fairness in a technology-driven global economy. Until that time 
comes, the new conservative race card will be a hideous thing 
indeed.

The good news is that a new progressive agenda is in the works, 
and has been for some time. The bad news is that we will have to 
win a long, low-level civil war against the right to restore social 
justice in this country. Time to stop whining and start fighting.


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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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