The Social Security Scam: How Media-Driven Misdirection is Being Used to Hijack Your Future

As the budget battle rages in Washington, calls to cut Social Security benefits are ramping up. Pundits pushing ‘conventional wisdom’ say that doing so is prudent for a nation facing large deficits. This solution is endorsed by congressional majorities, along with virtually every talking head on television (with varying degrees of rhetorical eagerness or caution, depending on party affiliation). The assumption that deficit reduction can be achieved through cuts to Social Security benefits is so ubiquitous that most Americans would be dumbfounded to learn that this assumption is totally false.

In terms of our deficits and debt, cutting Social Security benefits is exactly like raising the limit on one of our credit cards. You can transfer other balances using the Social Security surpluses, or buy new stuff, but it won’t change total debt. While you’d expect this to be a major issue in the debate, it’s not. It is ignored because debate starts with the assumption that this “solution” works. Here we can thank our media, which obscures debate rather than illuminating it.

The presentation of views from a limited cross-section of our two political parties (usually conservative Democrats and most Republicans) typically creates the impression of full coverage — “both sides” — while leaving key information and assumptions unexamined. With Social Security, this is done by marketing, as gospel, the idea that there is broad agreement from the left and right about the efficacy of cutting it, best exemplified by the media worship of the “bipartisan” deficit commission. So questions concerning the fairness or feasibility of reducing deficits with cuts to Social Security are moot, and debate can jump straight to political soap-opera mode: “Does Congress have the guts to go after Social Security? Will doing so help raise the political capital of Republicans or Democrats?” The protagonists and antagonists are the parties and their personalities, with the only point of consideration being whether there is sufficient political will “to do what must be done.”

Looked at another way, the media endorses Beltway thinking by self-imposing restrictions on its own power. Where mainstream politicos agree upon a question of fact — like the ability of Social Security cuts to reduce the deficit — the media is powerless to present contradictory evidence. Mainstream journalists seem reluctant to interfere with the political system by conducting their own good-faith fact checking. Doing so might unfairly benefit whichever political flack is telling the fewest lies, or, worse, embarrass both parties. In the news business, that kind of independent journalism is called “bias.”

What would the debate look like if the media started at the beginning, exploring first the merits of cutting Social Security before getting into how the program might be cut?

We would probably first consider what Social Security is: a 75-year-old public insurance program that allows us all to save just enough to avoid working to the grave for food, or moving in with our adult children out of destitution. It works spectacularly well, solving a problem that has always dogged humankind. Social Security grants dignity to hundreds of millions of aging Americans who would otherwise confront the less pleasant world that existed before the program.

That’s not all. Social Security is arguably the most stable, well-run government program in the United States. While other programs, like military spending, require new votes of money every single year, Social Security is running a surplus and will be over a hundred years old before it starts falling short of its obligations. Moreover, it would be solvent for many more years with only minor adjustments. It’s government at its best.