So
the president's pitch to African-Americans on the need for private Social Security accounts is this: Black people don't live as long as everyone else, so they end up paying in more and getting less out. So private accounts would enable them to pass the savings on to their families. You know, according to compassionate conservative and White House spokesman Scott McClellan:
"African-American males have a -- have had a shorter life span than other sectors of America," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan. "And this will enable them to build a nest egg of their own and be able to pass that nest egg on to their survivors."
First, and importantly, is that this is just
patently, 100% false. Yes, African-Americans have a shorter life expectancy, but the -- to coin a phrase -- "fuzzy math" the president is using is wrong and deceptive:
Bush didn't make up this phony line on his own; it comes from the Heritage Foundation, which a number of years ago did a study purporting to show that because African-Americans have a shorter life expectancy than whites, they get less in return for the taxes they pay into the Social Security system.
But when the Heritage study was examined by actuaries at the Social Security Administration and by the Government Accountability Office, serious methodological flaws and numerous bad assumptions were uncovered. (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
But perhaps even more importantly, here's a crazy thought: How about addressing things like poverty, economic opportunity, poor education, poor health care, and the other factors that lead to shorter life-expectancy for black Americans? You know, instead of using this failure of our public policy to advance a partisan, ideological outcome on Social Security.
Truly amazing.
What's next? People who eat bacon are more likely to have heart disease, so all bacon-eaters should support this privatization/phase-out scheme? How about sky divers?
