Numbers Don't Lie:

In 1933, when Social Security was instituted, the average life expectancy was just 63, while today it is around 78, if you're a white male. This is the primary argument that all parties fall back on when they point out that Social Security needs to be fixed or done away with as some on the far right argue.

But in this case the numbers are highly misleading. In 1933, infant mortality was much higher than it is today. If you lived to be 60 years of age in those days, you could actually expect to live to be 75 years of age, only three or four years less than today. The real truth is that the problem with Social Security is an expected short fall equivalent almost precisely to—you guessed it: the Bush tax cuts.

To read more about the situation, see Sunday's Washington Post.

Fixing Social Security:

Gail Collins makes fun of Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chair of President Obama's deficit reduction commission, in today's New York Times. Simpson, another career politician who hasn't earned an honest dollar in decades, wants to do away with social security so that working people will die younger and stop joining AARP when they turn fifty.

Collins, on the other hand, has an excellent idea for helping to fix the Social Security budget issues. It's not a new one, but one whose time has surely come: remove the cap on income that's taxed annually. Currently, that cap means that only the first $106,800 of annual income is taxed. Surely, people earning more than this can afford to pay the tax if those of us who earn less can do it.

Write your congressman. Tell him you'll go anti-incumbent if he doesn't go along with the idea.


Today in History:

Today is the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. You can hear it on YouTube. Forget about the Fox idiot who is trying to usurp it in Washington today.