A number of commentators, including my colleague Algernon Austin, have pointed out that a proposed cut in the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) would disproportionately affect blacks and Hispanics. Proponents have countered that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a means-tested program managed by the Social Security Administration that could be exempted from the COLA cut.

While it’s true that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to qualify for SSI benefits, exempting SSI  from the COLA cut wouldn’t change the fact that blacks and Hispanics still rely on Social Security for a larger share of their incomes than whites. SSI, while a critical lifeline for some, is a much smaller program, representing just 17 percent of the benefits blacks and Hispanics receive from both Social Security and SSI together (calculations are based on tables 3.C7A and 3.C8 in the 2011 Social Security Administration’s Annual Statistical Supplement, which exclude children under 15).

Not only does Social Security represent a greater share of black and Hispanic income, but black and Hispanic beneficiaries tend to be younger than white beneficiaries, with a greater likelihood of receiving disability and survivor benefits (see previously cited tables and this Social Security Administration fact sheet). Disabled beneficiaries and others receiving benefits over long periods face the steepest cuts from the proposed COLA cut. Among retirees, the worst hit will be women across racial and ethnic groups as well as Hispanics, due to longer life expectancies.

The New York Times is reporting that President Obama is backing off his pledge to allow the Bush tax cuts on income more than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples) to expire, instead proposing to only allow the tax cuts on income above $400,000 to expire. Though not quite as bad as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s preemptive cave last summer in proposing to shift the threshold from $200,000 to $1 million, this is still a really bad idea.

Beyond the revenue loss, it’s simply ridiculous to claim that households making up to $400,000 are “middle class”; as we’ve shown before, even households up to the $200,000–250,000 threshold probably shouldn’t be considered “middle class.” Yes, it’s notoriously hard to pin down an exact definition of “middle class,” but it is clearly intended to characterize households that fall roughly in the middle of the income distribution. Yet, as the below graph shows, all the thresholds mentioned above include households whose income falls well outside the area where most households are concentrated.

This isn’t surprising. More than 87 percent of taxpayers make less than $100,000 a year, according to IRS data, and the average household makes roughly $50,000 a year. This means that households making between $200,000 and $400,000 are making between four and eight times what most American households earn. Stretching the definition of “middle class” to include households with more than $200,000 is to render the term meaningless.

An undercover documentary report recently aired on France’s public television station found disturbing new evidence that the living and working conditions of the factory workers making the iPhone 5 are grim. The new report adds to the overall picture described in Polishing Apple: Fair Labor Association gives Foxconn and Apple undue credit for labor rights progress; optimistic reports that reforms at Foxconn, which assembles the iPhone 5 for Apple, are going swimmingly are entirely premature.

A story on Engadget provides an English summary of the investigation, which can be found in full (but in French). The story reported that at Foxconn’s iPhone 5 factory in Zhengzhou:

• Many workers are living in unfinished dorms that have no elevators, electricity, or running water.
• Eight workers living in dorms with electricity were killed in a fire caused by workers plugging electronic devices into overloaded circuits, according to the reporters’ translation of a safety speech given by a Foxconn supervisor.
• Student workers are still being forced to work there, including Read more

One of the unfortunate side effects of the political dysfunction that has increasingly gripped the nation’s capital is a habit of lurching from one crisis to the next rather than taking time to do a bottom-up assessment of the effectiveness of current policy.

The Bush tax cuts are a great example of this. Republicans want to extend all of the Bush tax cuts, while Democrats generally support extending the tax cuts for only the bottom 98 percent of households. But few end up debating whether these tax cuts are actually optimal policy, and if perhaps a better replacement exists.

This is unfortunate, because the Bush tax cuts are pretty poor policy; in a decade of existence, they have accomplished none of the goals they were intended to achieve. In fact, judging the Bush tax cuts based on their economic impact, distributional impact, and cost, they have been an outright disaster.

Economic stagnation

Under practically any measure, the economy performed exceedingly poorly in the years following the Bush tax cuts. Of the 10 economic expansions since 1949, the economic expansion from 2001 to 2007 ranks last Read more

Here are a few links that EPI’s research team clicked through today:

• “Social Security Checks Enter the Debate” (New York Times)
• “Boehner’s Plan B Fails; Inmates Running Asylum” (New York Magazine)
• “After Recession, More Young Adults Are Living on Street” (New York Times)
• “Study: D.C. third-graders have not improved in math, reading since 2007” (Washington Post)

As my colleagues have shown, the “chained” cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security being discussed between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner is a cut to benefits. The AARP Public Policy Institute’s report, Social Security: A Key Retirement Income Source for Older Minorities, helps us to think about how this cut might affect different racial groups.

Nearly one-in-five (18.7 percent) of the Hispanic elderly lives in poverty. For African Americans, the rate is one-in-six (17.1 percent) (Figure A). A cut to Social Security benefits runs the risk of significantly increasing these rates.

Latinos and blacks tend to have lower lifetime earnings and this fact results in lower levels of Social Security income. But it is also the case that these groups have less wealth and therefore depend on Social Security more. Figure B shows that roughly one-in-four Latino (25.4 percent) and black (26.3 percent) Social Security beneficiaries rely on Social Security for 100 percent of their income. For these individuals, Social Security cuts will hurt the most.

Although few in the United States have heard about it, Dec. 18 is known around the world as International Migrants Day. It began in part as a way to commemorate and remind governments to adopt the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, an international treaty created to protect the basic human rights of those who cross international borders—whether by choice or by force—in search of a better life. But it is also a day to recall the economic contributions of immigrants, by reminding us that most immigrants in the United States are workers—workers who toil alongside their native-born counterparts on agricultural lands, in factories, and in engineering labs. On this International Migrants Day, I am particularly hopeful that positive reforms to our immigration system may soon be enacted—reforms that will benefit and protect both immigrant and U.S. workers alike—thanks to the renewed discussions on comprehensive immigration reform that are taking place among the public, the media, on Capitol Hill and in the White House. And these discussions finally include skeptics, who until recently, considered legalization of the vulnerable unauthorized immigrant population to be unthinkable.

However, my optimism is tempered by the disturbing and uninformed comments being made by traditionally anti-worker sources like Read more

If news reports are accurate, the worst part of the tentative budget deal reportedly being hashed out between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner is a proposed cut in the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security. This is a travesty, not least because Social Security is required by law to operate in long-term balance and therefore does not belong in budget talks ostensibly aimed at reducing long-term budget deficits.

We at EPI and our allies in the Strengthen Social Security coalition have written at length about the downsides of a COLA cut. It would have the biggest impact on the oldest retirees, who are often the poorest retirees. It would disproportionately affect disabled beneficiaries, including veterans, many of whom will see the cut cumulate over decades. And it would break the pledge made by many would-be Social Security reformers to shield current retirees, who cannot retroactively save more for retirement.

Let no one be fooled by the pretense that this is a technical adjustment. If COLA cut advocates truly believed that the chain index was more accurate (and the current measure inappropriately provided a real benefit increase over time), there would be no talk of a “birthday bump” to temporarily offset the cut after 20 years.

A lower “chained” COLA is supposed to better account for consumers’ ability to substitute cheaper goods and services in response to price increases. But Social Security beneficiaries spend a greater share of their incomes on necessities such as rent and utilities, so it is not even clear that the current measure understates the ability of beneficiaries to make such adjustments.

Even if it does, it is unlikely that a chained measure that also accounted for beneficiaries’ greater spending on out-of-pocket medical expenses would produce cost savings. The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces an “experimental” index, the CPI-E, which roughly tracks the spending of elderly consumers and has risen faster than the current measure. But neither the current index nor the CPI-E are based on the actual spending patterns of Social Security beneficiaries. Along with some 300 other Ph.D. economists and social insurance experts, we think the Bureau of Labor Statistics should construct one. In the meantime, leave the COLA alone.

If reports are correct, Congress and President Obama are currently considering resolving the fiscal showdown by, among other things, cutting Social Security benefits through changing the cost of living adjustment. It is ridiculous. It is outrageous.

Historically, Social Security, defined-benefit (DB) pensions, and private savings successfully formed the foundation of middle-class retirement security. But DB pensions have declined in the private sector: only 18 percent of workers are covered, compared to nearly 40 percent in 1980. And since the early 80s, stagnant wages have caused the net worth of the bottom 60 percent of households to decline; the typical household approaching retirement age has less than the equivalent of two years’ worth of income saved in a retirement account—if they have retirement savings at all. Social Security remains the most reliable and effective part of the nation’s provision of retirement security, and for many households, retiree benefits averaging less than $15,000 a year are their sole source of income.

Our current deficits largely stem from the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts, overseas wars, an unpaid-for expansion of prescription drug benefits, and a failure to control the excesses and abuses of the financial industry. In fact, over the last few decades, Social Security was running a surplus, providing cover for ill-advised revenue and spending decisions that Republicans now refuse to rescind. And over the long run, Social Security is legally prohibited from adding to the deficit.

So why are Republicans insisting that resolving the fiscal showdown include Social Security benefit cuts? Read more

Earlier this week, we released the old-school version (i.e., printed book instead of website) of The State of Working America, 12^th Edition. All things economic that are not “fiscal cliff” related are having a hard time getting a public hearing these days, which is understandable. But we think that The State of Working America really should be a required reference for anybody writing about fiscal policy debates.

A key point we at EPI have tried to make over and over again in fiscal discussions is that approaching these issues only within the framework of “spending” and “revenues”—with no sense of the broader economic context— will lead to all the wrong questions being asked and solutions being offered. And The State of Working America provides this crucial broader context.

Take the debate over taxes, particularly tax rates on the highest-income households. The first thing the data in SWA help illuminate is just how modest the changes currently under discussion are, and how low taxes paid by the highest-income households are in historical perspective. For the top 0.1 percent, for example, the average effective federal tax rate in 2011 is only about half as high as it was in 1970, and the changes under discussion would only give these rates the gentlest nudge (see the effect of these cuts starting in 2000) back towards these 1970 rates. Read more