Paul Krugman makes a great case in his memo this morning.
Reliance on Social Security isn’t evenly distributed across the population; it’s strongly correlated with socioeconomic status. In particular, it very much depends on education, with less-educated Americans much more reliant on the program than those with more education:
Source: Social Security Administration
But here’s the thing — less educated voters strongly favored Trump in November:
And by putting him over the top they set the stage for demolition of a government program that is the only thing standing between them and dire poverty in their later years.
Now, it’s true that during the campaign Trump claimed that he wouldn’t cut Social Security or Medicare. If you were paying attention, however, you knew that Trump was highly likely to break that promise, that a second Trump administration would be pursuing the Project 2025 agenda and would do all it could to dismantle the social safety net.
<snip>
In any case, what’s clear is that working-class voters weren’t paying attention; they thought they were voting for lower grocery prices, not an assault on Social Security.
And the fact that so many voters seemed oblivious to clear signs about what Trump would do if he won ought to inform every discussion about how to oppose him.
I generally try not to be one of those people saying “This is what Democrats must do,” for a couple of reasons. One is that I don’t have firm views about what works politically. Another is that all too often “what Democrats must do” just happens to reflect the speaker’s policy preferences rather than a realistic assessment of political effectiveness.
But I can’t help noticing that the inverse correlation between how Americans voted in 2024 and their real interests makes it clear that two of the main factions in the intra-party debate about Democrats’ next moves are talking nonsense.
On one side there are relatively conservative Democrats and Democratic-leaning pundits telling us that the party must move to the center. But when it comes to Social Security, which is really important to most Americans, Democrats — who want to preserve the program — are very much in the center, while Republicans — who want to kill it — are extremists. Yet last November, the voters who have most to lose from this extremism didn’t notice.
On the other side there are progressives who argue that Democrats are in trouble because they abandoned the working class. But even if you think that Democrats have been too friendly toward globalization, or deregulation, or low corporate taxes, the Democratic Party has been far more favorable to workers than the Republicans. The Biden administration was especially pro-worker. But working-class voters didn’t notice.
What all this says is that the priority for Democrats isn’t to pursue whatever you think is a better policy mix. It is to get voters to notice.
This almost certainly requires new leadership, if only to help persuade voters that the party isn’t run by tired careerists.
The problem with someone like Chuck Schumer isn’t that he’s too centrist, it’s that he’s a 74-year-old (writes a stripling of 72) whose instinct is to try to deftly navigate his way through a political landscape that demands not careful calculation but vocal, visible outrage, both to motivate the Democratic base and to get other voters’ attention.
And the attack on Social Security is something that should both inspire outrage and offer an opportunity to connect with working-class Americans.
So how do we turn the Social Security crisis into an opportunity?
Can we talk about that?
hrprogressive
Start speaking like them, but progressively.
“MAGA Is Gonna Kill Your Grandmother by Destroying Social Security”
“MAGA to Middle America: Drop Dead”
“MAGA: Robbing You Blind to Give The Elite Even More Wealth”
Stop the bullshit “common ground” nonsense and speak bluntly and so an average voter can understand it.
You won’t pierce the cultists but you might get the vibes voters to notice.
trollhattan
Can someone explain the top graph to me? esp. >50 >90. Type real slow, it’s Monday.
u
I guess I’m not supposed to say this, but — stupid people are often too stupid to look out for their own interests. Maybe they can become less stupid, but I’m pessimistic about the likelihood of that happening.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan:
Blue… is… folks who rely on SS for > 50% of their income.
Orange… is… folks who rely on SS for > 90% of their income
edit: I typed as slowly as I could. :-)
hw3
Reboot the conversation about how weird all these folks are. They are not like Middle American in any way.
Open the doors and be patient as folks who’ve been inculcated with extremist right wing propaganda come out of their epistemic bubble.
WaterGirl
@u: Krugman seems to be saying that it’s our job to get them to notice.
That’s the leading the horse to water part. They have to do the rest.
Seems like it would be smart to start spreading the word about the impact on people, and spend less time complaining about the democratic party being feckless.
P.S. Any chance you could be talked into using a nym with more than one letter? :-)
First, I always think there’s something broken when I see it, and two, if someone wants to search for your comments because they think you’re interesting, they would get every single word with a “u” in it.
WaterGirl
@hw3:
“There’s something wrong with these people. They’re weird and they don’t care whether your parents have to come live with you because they get kicked out of their nursing home and your kids have to live with you because they can’t afford to live on their own.”
suzanne
Ezra Klein made this point a few weeks ago. (And some people here dismissed it because we apparently can’t agree with people on some things but disagree on other things.) But it’s true: the ability to command attention and to communicate simply-yet-powerfully is the coin of the realm right now.
The vast majority of the elected Dems look and sound like they went to prep school. Even I get annoyed by those weenies.
hw3
@WaterGirl: This.
No One You Know
As a college graduate who will be extremely reliant on Social Security, I feel weird. What I don’t see here is the health factors that can make employment difficult at the best of times, let alone the pump- and- dump cycles that contractors have. Now roll in a Bad call on retirement investing (Enron– weren’t they the smartest guys in the room?) and I feel shakier yet.
Now I know why I’m “a top supporter” in my area, which seems to be purplish in a blue zone. 😐
It really burns that the best I could at the time with what I knew wasn’t enough. And I knew at 20 that it was going to be hard. Just not this hard.
WaterGirl
@suzanne: So forget for a minute about what the elected officials are saying.
I’m wondering what WE can do, as actual humans who are being impacted. On social media. In conversations. By contacting our elected officials all the damn time.
Maybe we need to get them to notice what we’re saying.
Old School
@trollhattan:
For people without a high school diploma, Social Security is at least 50% of their income for 68.3% of them. Social Security is more than 90% of their income for 41.4%.
Gloria DryGarden
@trollhattan: the y axis is unlabeled, and it’s not percentages for each group. Or else the green and orange bars would add up to 100%.0-90 units, but of what?
the green bar is how many,( in whatever number of what) rely on soc security for over 50% of their income,
The orange is how many rely on it for over 90% of their income, meaning it’s all, or nearly all they have for retirement.
WaterGirl
@No One You Know:
Can you say more about that?
Belafon
And we have to do it in ways that gets through to the people that have their tvs constantly on Fox or worse.
suzanne
@WaterGirl: What we can do….. for those who are willing to engage in actual face-to-face persuasion, we can also talk about it in very straightforward language. “Gosh, this destruction of Social Security is terrible! Damn these Republicans, always trying to steal our money.”
Democrats should never use the world “oligarchy” ever again. I facepalm every time I hear it.
Steve LaBonne
My somewhat pessimistic and somewhat cynical belief is that nonpolitical normies won’t believe Trump and Musk are going to inflict serious pain on them until it happens. The big job for Democrats, now that their March 14 leverage has been blown off, is to lay the rhetorical groundwork for pinning the blame on Republicans when crunch time arrives. You know, the thing Schumer signally failed at.
Mikr1172
Resentment is a powerful emotion to play on. Show contrasts in life of rich v. everyone else, but don’t make the rich images look too aspirational, more creepy and exploitative. The American dream is all about aspiration. Make it seem walled off to everyone cause it’s been rigged against them and now the rich want to steal your SS money outright.
another way is to go is go out on the stump bragging about making SS even better. If we tax them we can all have a nice vacation every year like when you were a kid, or just straight up : get more $$ with the Dems.
Insert caveat about Dem messaging coordination
Gloria DryGarden
@Old School: except, there’s no 109% of a group of people.
100% of x people is x. If the group has x, in it, that’s everyone in the group. There’s no 9% more people in the group.
so it can’t be percent. It might be thousand, or 10 thousand, 100 k,
i wish it were labeled.
62 million Americans (USA) are 65 and over, ie retirement age. If anyone wants to extrapolate
Old School
@Gloria DryGarden: There’s overlap.
The people who rely on Social Security for more than 90% of their income also rely on it for more than 50% of their income.
No One You Know
@WaterGirl: Yeah. I just edited my comment, but basically what I’m introducing here is the finding that the #1 predictor of homelessness is mental/ emotional health issues.
Krugman has made it so about education. A bad genetic combo and bad childhood experiences also affect outcomes. I’m one of millions who tried to beat the combo and didn’t. The lethal thing to adult life is a shaky foundation. You do the best with what you have. But that best can put you in bad places nonetheless.
Sorry to be whingeing. I do know it’s not just me, though. The shame of it, of having to rely on SS when I’m smart and kept on the education as I knew I had to, is scorching. What I could do wasn’t enough. And I need SS now and the move to add more time to qualify means I can’t get the calculated amount the year I need it. It’s gonna be a bad retirement. College doesn’t go well for a lot of us, and employment is just a place to replicate the unstable lessons of how to be with other people when family didn’t ground you in how to be with people.
TONYG
Trump supporters are a cult. People MIGHT leave a cult when the cult starts to physically harm them, but very often they don’t. I DO NOT CHOOSE TO ASSOCIATE WITH TRUMP VOTERS because I neither like nor respect those people. I am not about to go knocking on doors of random strangers to try to convince them to stop being morons. So — those people are on their own, to learn (or not learn) from their stupidity. It took the most destructive war in human history to break the German cult of Hitler.
Belafon
Oh, and the people who think it won’t affect them. Far too many people can only think one consequence deep, ie, they can think x will cause y, but not y will cause z and z will cause a.
trollhattan
@WaterGirl:
Thank
you
kindly.
It’s a bit disturbing how many college grads are in the 50% bracket. SS does not pay all that much, even at its ceiling.
Steve LaBonne
@TONYG: Not all people who voted for Trump are solidly within the MAGA cult. Few of us believe that it’s possible to deprogram the cult members, but they can’t win elections on their own.
Gloria DryGarden
@Old School: i take your point.
I like math, but now my head is refusing to try to make more sense of this poorly -labeled graph.
dc
I think it’s important to remember that we need to divide the voter pie into three almost equal parts, 1/3 voted for the Asshole; 1/3 voted for Harris; 1/3 didn’t vote. A slice of this last group will make a difference between victory and defeat.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
I think it’s Rep Cesar who has been saying Muskrat gets $8M per day from the govt, and the average person on Social Security gets around $60. I wish that message would get more airtime. I don’t know how you do that.
Steve LaBonne
@Belafon: The country has already been permanently diminished and impoverished, but the effects of that will be a slow drip that most people will not perceive, since they’re not capable of measuring the new reality against what should have been. Only sharp pain like a steep recession or SS checks not coming will get the average person’s attention.
Doc Sardonic
There is a saying that the longer I am on this rock, the more truth I see in it. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Krugman is riffing on a conversation I was having with my late father during the W misadventure, wondering what to do to get Kerry elected. My dad’s premise was that the Democrats needed to be very loud, aggressive and take it to Bush/Cheney. His statement at the wouldn’t exactly fit on a bumper sticker but here it is: “ Kerry needs to grab that damn cowboy wannabe by the nose with Iraq, punch him in the head with Medicare and kick him in the ass with social security ‘til his nosebleeds. Unfortunately, Kerry is a Democrat and he’s too damn nice to do that, so get ready for another go ‘round with the fake Texan.”
Democrats needed to quit being so damn nice, polite and gentrified looking for common ground and trying sing Kumbaya. It is time to bust the liquor bottle on the bar and cut some motherfuckers.
Ksmiami
@TONYG: this. A million times. I can only help the people I care about. The Trumpers are my enemy and they can all foad.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Funny how Sanders and AOC just did a helluva tour with shitloads of people using the term “oligarchy”. Sanders even joked about it. It worked.
Know your audience. Don’t use it for other audiences. We should be able to tailor or message appropriately. The Denver rally was really effective in terms of how they had people up there and it wasn’t until AOC/Sanders were speaking that the term came up. The Latina women representing private sector unions and public education, the illegally fired FTC commissioner and Jimmy Williams (the IUATC head) didn’t use the term but set the stage for the headliners to. Again, it worked.
And fuck Little Ezra Klein, just an honorary horseman in the Four Horsemen of the Neoliberal Apocalypse. He’s one of the New Democrat/New Liberalism clowns (and the people who think they’re speaking Good Things) who, in part, helped put us here.
Salty Sam
You are not alone. A shaky start to adult life, a few bad financial decision, and a slew of adverse life events has left me totally reliant on SSI.
I have downsized, declutterred, and streamlined my life so as to be comfortable, but it is living too close to the bone- no luxury, no extravagance. If SS goes away, I am fucked.
WaterGirl
@suzanne:
We all go to the grocery store, and it’s a perfect place to strike up that kind of exchange. I’ll call it an exchange because it’s probably not long enough to call it a conversation.
You get the grocery store clerk and the people behind you in line :-)
“Groceries have gotten so high! They said it was going to be better after the election (do not say Trump) but now it’s even worse. Between that and being scared that my mom is going to lose her social security, I just don’t know what to do.”
Plant the seed. And do some version of the hit and run message every time you’re in a line, or whatever.
WTFGhost
I don’t know if this is a change or not, but recently he’s been very specific that he won’t cut *benefits* – meaning, he’s going to cut the ever-living-eff out of eligibility, throwing people off of Social Security Disability, declaring people dead, etc..
In that manner, he gets to cut the *programs* while not cutting the *benefits*.
Republicans get a special tingle, right down *there*, when they tell a lie using facts – called a “lie of omission”. Did you know Trump said “I like to blow goats”? Yeah.
OH! I should mention, I mean, he said “I”, and “like,” and “to,” and “blow,” and “goats.” I just didn’t mention he didn’t say the words “I like to blow goats” in that order, and in the expected context. Just so you see what a lie of omission allows, at its out edges.
Trump doesn’t usually go for cute lies; usually, he’s just a bullshitter who doesn’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth – he barely knows what words are coming out of his mouth, half the time. He confesses he never thought of the word “groceries, and it’s like, everything you eat!” Oh, but he knew the promise he’d fix them “on Day One” because it doesn’t matter how many bullshit promises you make, when your only goal is to stay out of a prison jumpsuit for betraying the nation you claim to serve.
Okay, but, he goes for cute lies, when he knows he needs to get the line right. So: his cute lie is, he won’t cut *benefits*, and, he’ll probably move to saying he won’t cut *current* benefits, just, he wants to screw over the people who come later.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Doc Sardonic:
Thing is, the entitled white gentrifiers basically control the party direction with policies and language that’s in direct contrast to what the other big chunk of the party stands for. That divergence has been on full display here since around 2016 and shows no signs of changing.
No One You Know
Rereading the article, I know notice that low critical thinking skills at high school produce voters who can’t see the distortions in propaganda. In my history and that of others I see how being swamped with problems denies time and space to think as well.
Which explains why the Dept. Of Education had to be destroyed first.
Ohio Mom
Yeah, I’m too frazzled today to interpret that graph. One thing I don’t think it captures is that circumstances can change over time.
You could be still be working, maybe part time, in your younger retirement years, and so not be all that dependent on your Social Security benefit.
Then your body could fail and you end up in a retirement home and you run through your savings and have nothing left except Social Security and the place you are living takes all of it except $25 a week pocket money.
Or alternatively, you could stay hale and hearty and live independently and run out of savings and Social Security is all you are left with.
Or along the way your savings are wiped out by a stock market crash and the resulting recession.
Now it is probably hard to convince people with cheerier personalities than mine that those are all possibilities in their personal futures.
Matt McIrvin
@suzanne:
I have this instinctive nerd-defensiveness reflex to say “Hey! I’m one of those people!”
And then I remember: actually I’m *not*. I taught some of those people in grad school. One of them told me once that I talk like the people in “Fargo”. I wasn’t one of them, I was the help.
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: Yeah, I’m not getting it either.
WaterGirl
@No One You Know: I hear you. Thanks for the clarification.
I have to say, though, that there is no shame in relying on Social Security. That’s why we all paid into it.
I keep saying there’s no one single reason why we’re here and no single way to move forward – there is no one true faith.
But education is a piece of it and I think it makes sense for messaging to realize that the everyday people who voted for FFOTUS are a big part of the group that’s gonna be hurt the most.
lowtechcyclist
To me, the graph is clear except for the one thing that’s missing: what’s defining the denominators, besides just education level?
There’s no way that ~68% of people who haven’t graduated from high school rely on Social Security for >50% of their income, because most of them aren’t old enough to collect Social Security.
So there has to be another factor in defining each group. It’s probably either “collecting Social Security and didn’t graduate from high school” or “X years of age or older and didn’t graduate from high school” or something like that.
Grrr. Argh.
Doc Sardonic
@Doc Sardonic: Edit window closed on me. Should add to above. My dad was a yellow dog and ham sandwich Democrat, run either one against a Republican and he was gonna vote the Dog/Sandwich ticket.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl:
Still don’t get it. You got both numbers for *each group*. So, is it more than 50% or more than 90%?
@Old School: Oh, ok. I guess I’m tracking now…
West of the Rockies
Thank you for this. WG. I’m so glad that BJ is recovering from its post-election “we are so screwed” doomerism.
We have some excellent young people in our party. They’re not flawless (who is?), but they are gifted: AOC, Jordan Harris, Ossoff, Katie Porter, Jasmine Crockett… Time to let th begin to lead.
WaterGirl
@Belafon: Agree. I call that the inability for some people to draw a dotted line from one thing to the next.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@No One You Know:
Yup. Nobody predicted that slowly strangling public education would have consequences.
40 years ago the assault on public education started in earnest. Two, possibly three or more generations of people who lack critical thinking skills are signing in, signing up … and voting. Or worse, running for office.
And yet, we have a large core of (D) policy makers and voters who will say that public education is good “in theory” as an excuse to dismantle it in ways not dissimilar to what the right wing has been doing stridently for decades.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: I’m sure I would be in that group if I hadn’t worked at an educational institution with a separate retirement system.
Alce _e_ardillo
@No One You Know: as another who will be reliant on SSA, I hear you. I have no magic formula for getting voters to tune in, just a few tips for what worked for me in my career. One talk simply. The less jargon, process, inside baseball, the better. Two, don’t talk policy, talk stories. Connect with what you both have. Use analogies- if your speaking with a mechanic, talk car engines. Homemakers talk groceries. But also make it clear that some analogies don’t work. The government is not a household…etc.
Be prepared to fail sometimes. Not everyone will agree with you. But keep moving forward.
suzanne
@WaterGirl: Agree! Those drive-by-type comments are good.
Josie
@Doc Sardonic: Sounds like my father, only he said he would vote for a “red-assed baboon” on the Democratic ticket.
Deputinize America
“Over the past 45 years, trickle down hasn’t worked for you. Technological marvels should have resulted in higher pay and shorter working hours as everyone benefitted.
That benefit of technology has been stolen from you and handed to people who came to the table with generational inherited wealth. In those 45 years, your working life has gotten worse, your hours have gotten longer, your job protections and benefits stripped while the people you benefitted with your labor took some of the money which should have gone to you and used it to buy your legislators, buy your judiciary and buy your governors and president. The rest, they piled up in useless, pathological ways like some hoarder collecting breadbags in a junked up house – they’re collecting numbers in a digital ledger which have no possibility of meaningfully improving their lives.”
WaterGirl
@Steve LaBonne: Most of my extended family, who sadly mostly voted for FFOTUS, aren’t MAGA. They think it’s “business as usual”, just the normal Republican Democrat split.
:: spit ::
Doc Sardonic
@Miss Bianca: Take each bar section of the graph as representing 100% of that demographic group.
rikyrah
Ron Filipkowski
@RonFilipkowski
Trump supporter Rick Fuze was arrested in Berkeley for using a stun gun on peaceful protesters outside a Tesla dealership. Fuze claimed they were paid protesters and he went there to show his support for Musk and DOGE.
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1904209829901570325
WaterGirl
@dc: Yes!
Huge yes, this is correct.
rikyrah
NOTHING gets folks’ attention like an empty bank account when that check’s supposed to have dropped.
WaterGirl
@eclare: Remember when TBogg did the whole “santorum” think by getting a bunch of people on the internet to band together and put it everywhere?
Why can’t we do that with our messaging?
Gloria DryGarden
@Old School: ok, i get it now.
Folks w some college , because it’s an easy round number, 50%, and 20%:
half, 50%, rely on ss for 50% of their income
but 20% of that population group actually rely on it for 90% or more of their retirement income
Taking it one step further, in the group of retirees with some college—I’m in this group, once I officially retire— 2/5 of us, 40%, will rely on it for 90% or more of our retirement.
That’s me. It’s not much, and I’ve been living already on a careful shoestring budget.
And then there are more costs for health needs, as aging changes one. Oh dear
suzanne
@rikyrah: I often wonder if the fact that so many people are private about their personal finances makes it hard to build solidarity around this stuff.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Deputinize America:
Lots of us have been preaching this for around 45 years. :)
Since we’re talking about messaging, there’s got to be a better way of saying that sentence since your average low-inf/low-motivated voter won’t remember Reagan and won’t get the trickle-down reference.
But any “how has the economy failed you today” (aimed at voters who aren’t comfortable financially and otherwise reachable), which obviously can be traced to Reaganomics and it’s continued influence on both sides of the aisle, needs to be a helluva lot more succinct.
I’m not the one to do it because I still deliver everything like I was still an intel officer back in the Pentagon.
eclare
@Ohio Mom:
I believe you. There are very good reasons that Social Security is a guaranteed annuity for life. None of us has a crystal ball.
pajaro
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
There is no division in the party on policy with respect to Social Security–it’s been the same forever. There’s not even a difference on the message–ELON IS COMING FOR YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY. However, right now, there’s a clear difference between those who are better (Walz, AOC and Bernie) at getting it out, and those who are worse (Schumer).
WaterGirl
@No One You Know: I was really struck by how the Parkland kids handled the aftermath of the school shooting, compared with other schools.
Parkland had a focus on critical thinking for the kids at that school, and I think that’s what carried them through and allowed them to take what happened and use it to fight for change.
Gloria DryGarden
@Salty Sam: me too
Deputinize America
“But her emails….”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/?gift=kPTlqn0J1iP9IBZcsdI5IVJpB2t9BYyxpzU4sooa69M&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Stunning lack of discipline.
Mikr1172
@Deputinize America: I know Covid is being collectively memory-holed, but there was a time in ‘21-‘22 when you got money from the govt ( your tax dollars back) and people could see and feel benefits. AKA demand-side economics after 40 years of trickle down (supply-side)
I like the reversed narrative, people don’t realize it’s policy that is the difference, coupled with the “eat the rip-off rich”. They stole our future,etc
Soprano2
@WaterGirl: I keep sharing interesting stuff I see on FB about this stuff. I try not to make too much political commentary, hoping some people will read it and start figuring it out. I especially like those things I’ve been seeing that look like billboards and have short messages on them. I think they catch people’s attention better than an article.
Doc Sardonic
@WaterGirl: Very similar to how people were taught to read effects their information processing.
eclare
@Deputinize America:
I just saw that. People should be criminally charged. My money is on they won’t be.
Steve in the ATL
@u:
Isn’t this the point of Social Security?
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Rick Fuze? Send script back to the writers’ room for some rework.
OTOH the grey-haired lady slamming Rick Fuze’s head into the car is worth the watch.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@pajaro:
Never suggested or implied there was any breach in the Dem Party on Social Security.
I agree with WG that one thing we all could pull together on is that. And the challenge is to put that into every conversation much the way I’ve seen people do that with other policy issues over the last 7-8 years.
“Oh, isn’t the weather lovely today?”
“Only if you weren’t living in abject fear that Trump and the Republicans are going to take away Social Security”.
That sort of thing.
WaterGirl
@pajaro: I agree with you. I just think that we (regular humans) have to step up and do our part on the messaging, One line at the checkout counter at a time.
Deputinize America
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
“The Republican message has been ‘work harder so you can get ahead’. That’s been a lie from the start – you’ve been working harder and more productively for decades, but you haven’t been getting the benefit of your time, your effort, your stress and worry. The people who have been getting those are people who were born wealthy – and they took your money and made things worse for you.”
WaterGirl
@Doc Sardonic:
I am not familiar with that. Can you say more?
Soprano2
@Salty Sam: Graduating from college at the wrong time can affect your lifetime earnings a lot.
TONYG
@Steve LaBonne: I’m sure that that’s true. However, it’s hard for me to imagine a political conversation taking place with Trump voters in my real life. I have a few people in my extended family, and a few acquaintances (former co-workers) who are Trump supporters. I see these people socially once or twice a year. In the past decade since the emergence of Trump as a political figure, there has basically been an unwritten agreement between me and these people: “Don’t talk politics.”. By obeying this agreement we can avoid ugly confrontations — because I understand, and they understand, that it is impossible to have a reasonable, calm discussion about this. I’m sure that they have as much contempt for my viewpoints as I have for theirs. I wish I could be more optimistic, but I’m not.
MagdaInBlack
@Steve in the ATL: Um…..no.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Maybe its because the other chunk isn’t as big. And why are they a smaller slice of the electorate if they are so good at communicating?
eclare
@WaterGirl:
I can guarantee that every person at my Kroger is fully aware of this. My neighborhood is prob 90% D. My CD is 70%, but that includes some suburbs, and I rarely go out there.
narya
@WaterGirl: that was Dan Savage, I think.
@Ohio Mom: this is exactly why I’m doing consulting and, as of next month, also collecting SocSec. I have some retirement money, but it could all disappear; waiting as long as possible to touch it.
suzanne
@WaterGirl:
Agree with you again.
And, quite frankly, we also have to be normal and seem nice (which is a struggle for me, y’all). Persuasion is a skill.
Old School
@lowtechcyclist:
Aged 65 or older.
WTFGhost
How do you turn the crisis into an opportunity? Well – telling stories helps.
People say “don’t show the recipe, show the brownie.” Okay – don’t go into the weeds, saying “cuts to eligibility will kill people!” say “If you hurt your back, you may end up with neurological back pain. Doctors won’t be able to prove you’re in pain. Well, Trump will say you can’t prove your affliction, so, no benefits.
“Some people with severe back pain can’t even leave the bed or recliner other than for short periods of time, in intense pain. But Trump would let them die, rather than pay them a pittance to keep them alive.”
THAT is a story – it’s not a perfect story, because it doesn’t have a no-college construction contractor, or even a cleaning lady, saying “it happened to me.” But it shows that it’s not just “you won’t have a retirement”. I’d bet a lot of working class folks know of some poor, hapless bastard, they know isn’t faking, but the government insists is.
Say “if you live fifty miles from the nearest specialist, Trump doesn’t want you to have a telehealth meeting – he wants you to drive all the way to your specialist, no matter how huge a dent that puts in your day, when your boss doesn’t give you sick leave!”
Again, that’s a story – it may have nothing to do with funding, per se, but it’s a lost benefit, and, frankly, I’m past caring about making sure everyone understands *only* funding cuts.
If you’re a journalist, you need to find these stories. If you’re an ordinary human being, you can make them, because you’re not publishing – you don’t need fact checks. So you can tell them “someone hurt their back,” or, “someone can’t see an OB/GYN without two full hours of driving!” and I’ve heard it said, women folk to women folk, you can add in a pair of stirrups, to emphasize there wasn’t any need for them, when it was a simple telehealth call. Unless OB/GYNs finally have a science based pelvic exam schedule, I suppose.
There’s no need to go grody on these stories – all you have to do is have a hook, and a “no”. “Could you imagine, if you were in this situation, how furious you’d be, to hear you were perfectly qualified, until Trump personally decided to crap on people like you, personally, because you had no political power that mattered to him, claiming you were “waste, fraud, or abuse,” instead?”
You can end it with a blow-off line, like “well, Trump likes to hurt people, and swear that it’s only liberals who care. Maybe he’s right – Republicans aren’t trying to rein him in.”
schrodingers_cat
@Deputinize America: I replied to your comment on the last thread.
TONYG
@TONYG: Maybe an extreme analogy, but I don’t think so: It would have been impossible in 1932 for German supporters and opponents of Hitler to have a calm discussion while drinking tea.
Deputinize America
@Mikr1172:
As a family court dude with a working class clientele, I had a lot of people reach out to me – for the first time ever – be able to clear up their family problems. Many of them had been languishing in crisis for years, and that money provided their first opportunity to grab at a lifeline.
It made a major difference in their lives. Others used it to deal with deferred home maintenance and vehicle repairs.
cmorenc
The tactic Trump/Musk/Vought seem to be using (at least initially) is to leave SS (in particular benefits) nominally in place for several more years, and instead undermine its administrative structure to the point it becomes unreliable and unreachable and then sell that as fulfillment of the RW’s long prediction that it is unsustainable and inherently doomed to fail. But in the meantime, further weaken it with unsupportable benefit expansions such as excluding all forms of tips and ss benefit payments themselves from income taxation. Their strategy isn’t to repeal it, but to force it to fail and claim this was inherently inevitable rather than a RW engineered failure. We ate going to be battling a tidal wave of double talk, deflection, and disinformation about what is really going on with Ss.
WaterGirl
@WTFGhost:
That doesn’t even need to be the cherry on top of the sundae. It can be the whole dessert!
“It seems like Trump wants to hurt people, and none of the regular Republicans we grew up with are even trying to rein him in!
Edit: Maybe even start off with “I’m scared.” Then… It seems like Trump….
Captain C
@Deputinize America: FTFNYT: “Why it’s Hillary Clinton’s fault that TCFG’s team has no comms security”
Deputinize America
@cmorenc: I’m eligible to start full benefits in 4 years (I’m in the full eligibility at 67 notch). I fully expect that the rug will get pulled out from under me somewhere in my first 5 years of getting benefits.
Belafon
@lowtechcyclist: I figured you had to be on Social Security to be part of that list to begin with.
Steve LaBonne
@cmorenc: Yup. That’s why they quickly reeled in that idiot Dudek. He was stupidly trying to skip right to the end of that plan.
catothedog
Dems are dumb when it comes to messaging. DUMB
Forget Trump. Start blaming Republicans.
There is a golden opportunity coming. Easter & eggs & egg prices
Drive it in – Republicans and eggs prices. Drive it in till it becomes a mockery. Lot of opportunities for memes – unhappy bunny, disappointed kids. Make beggar memes of Trump begging Sweden and Germany for eggs.
Discourage, harass and depress your enemy. Stop playing nice.
Instead Dems have this holier-than-thou attitude – egg prices are the result of complicated economic situations, and beyond the control of politics. Yeah, Republicans won the last election blaming Dems for egg prices, but that was wrong and we will not get dirty in politics.
Politics is war by other means. F*ck these spineless Dems who can’t fight.
WTFGhost
@No One You Know: Friend, I did what you did. I refused to bow to shame and I kept working, as hard as I could, even when I realized the prospect of suicide was haunting me – when my troubles were that bad.
Now, me, I learned I’m in neurological pain. (Hence, the reason I offered a “bum back” as an example in another response.) I’ve learned my neurological pain affects my brain, and my emotions. I’ve learned, in fact, that my meditations that were intended to help me shut out the pains, so I could work, mandates instead that I accept them – they are my meditation focus – because it’s all-but impossible to shut it out.
I have mental and emotional issues, that I couldn’t explain, until 3 years ago, when, due to a minor medical miracle, I discovered I was not just helplessly emotional and brain damaged, I was actually in pain. None of it was my fault.
None of it was my fault anyway, of course – I was literally using every trick in the book, every thing I’d learned in over 50 years of life, and every methodology that I could adapt into my own life, and if I try to work, well… heh. A shotgun isn’t that expensive.
Now: the key isn’t that “I have pain, so, that makes it okay.” The key is, I did my absolute, effing, level best, fought with everything I had, and had to come to a grim realization that working will kill me.
For some reason, this world wants to make people, who are in fear for their own lives, feel ashamed for that, and people who’ve given all they had, they’re made to feel ashamed for not having more. That’s a sickness, and it’s the kind that leads to people like Trump, and, please, remember, being proud of having given your, well, your *everything*, is what you should feel. People like Trump should be viewed like something you’d hate to step in, even with your old hip waders – the shame is theirs, don’t let any fall on you… not if you can help it.
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: ( adding emphasis to everything you said:)
You get the grocery store clerk and the people behind you in line :-)
______________
I need to print out a list of these kinds of phrases, catchy, with no big academic words like oligarchy, no polarizing candidate names, just the effects on our lives as new policy gets enacted. If Suzanne and others have more suggestions of catchy one- and two-liners, It would be so good to have them all in one place.
Plain simple messaging that reaches people, so they notice, so they know, this matters in their lives, already now, or coming soon.
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: what you’ve pointed out is an important part of this
I’d like to study and memorize scripts from the people like AOC, and Suzanne, and other good communicators, who know how to speak about it all in accessible ways.
And those entitled white gentrifiers, with their privileged backgrounds, their elite experiences, and lovely educations, need to get better at including the rest of us democrats, in both language and policy.
WG, any chance you’d make a list of catchy useful phrases become another sidebar link? In your free time, I mean..
WTFGhost
@trollhattan: If you’re in 90, you’re already in 50 – each is “% of income” so, those for whom it represents 50%, are included in those for whom it represents 90%.
WTFGhost
@WaterGirl: But what does the yellow light mean?
(Never mind. Besides, it means “clear the intersection.”)
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
One thing I was able to articulate to myself lately is one simple truth: Democrats want everyone to vote, Republicans don’t. Which bleeds into their outreach approaches. Democrats try to get the right to vote for them, and Republicans try to get the left to stay home.
Because all they need is for enough of the left to stay home to win, and they manage that with their Both Sides BS.
We’ve got to figure out how to do the same. The people who can’t be convinced to vote for their own safety? They don’t have to vote for us as long as they don’t vote for the other guys.
How do we do this? I suspect indirectly highlighting how Trump played them for suckers. Don’t tell them they were scammed to their faces (at best they won’t listen and at worst they’ll double down). Just, if given the opportunity, never, ever shut up about all the harm Trump’s doing, and all the stuff he’s not doing that he said he would. Shame them without shaming them. Make them feel stupid behind a shield of plausible deniability.
That’s one thing that could help, perhaps.
p.a.
So blue is the total percentage of the considered population getting over 50% from SS, & orange is the percentage of the blue getting over 90%. Yes?
Eunicecycle
@Deputinize America: of all the incompetence and insanity coming out of this administration, this has to be the craziest. It’s so frightening.
Kelly
Our retirement plan is live of my IRA until next year then start SS when I am 70, Mrs. Kelly the year after. We plan for it to be about half our income after 70. This plan is decades old. If Trump suddenly breaks SS we won’t end up living under a bridge but DAMN it’s gonna be a slog to adjust. Suddenly is such an asshole move. Anyone that can plan for retirement needs to thinking in decades.
Doc Sardonic
@WaterGirl: Sure. Back in the day when a lot of us learned to read we were taught Phonics. In the late 70’s, early 80’s a new “better” way to teach kids to read came out, my kindergarten teacher mother called it “word calling” but I believe the technical term is word recognition. This method used word lists to teach children words so that the was them they recognized the word and could therefore read. This method did not use phonics, but gave children that were taught this a very fast leg up on reading versus children that were taught to read using the slower phonics method. However, this advantage for word recognition readers started to evoprate around 3rd or 4th grade as more complex words started entering into the material. Case in point, I know two people that learned to read at different times, one doing word recognition and the other doing phonics. The word recognition person did great until presented with words or concepts that were unfamiliar or abstract, then they hit the wall and might solve the problem but mostly threw up their hands and left the problem unsolved or got someone to solve it for them. The phonics learner when presented with the same situations was able to work through the unfamiliar and abstract but did not hit the brick wall. The word recognition person asked my mother why the phonics person had less trouble with these things and when they told mom how they learned to read, she suggested that they go get the Hooked on Phonics program and go through it, they did and information processing became easier for them.
Ruckus
I’d bet it is going to be somewhat difficult.
Because many of the seniors that can/are going to be affected by shitforbrains and his puppet master do not have a lot of connection to/of the internet. I know because I am a senior and live in a federal program apartment complex, everyone is a senior. Including the senior maintenance guy, who just retired. And the other one is not much younger. Sure the internet is available, I have it. But many of my neighbors are not in any way computer literate. A bunch are but not nearly all. And I imagine this will be how it looks pretty much everywhere. They don’t and never have owned a computer. I bought my first one in 1978.
suzanne
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: FFOTUS seems to turn out the “low-propensity voters”. Pushing for higher turnout might now be one of those things that we do because it’s right, but not because it serves us well. There is some evidence that it does not. We shouldn’t assume that non-voters like us better.
Belafon
@pajaro: I did a similar push-back yesterday on bsky. People are arguing that Democratic leadership is basically in the bag for Republicans. No, they’re not. They’re the wrong people for the current job, because they’re legislators, and we need vocal leaders, but people like Schumer and Pelosi got Democrat’s agenda through Congress with thin majorities.
WaterGirl
@Gloria DryGarden: Free time? Ha!
Timill
@lowtechcyclist: The answer is in Krugman’s post:
So the baseline is “Americans over 65”
Except it’s not. From the linked study: “This note examines reliance on Social Security benefits among people aged 65 or older as measured by the 2015 CPS and two other major surveys”.
WaterGirl
@WTFGhost: I don’t know, the movie I watched taught me that the yellow light means “go faster”.
What movie was that, with the alien visiting our planet? Such a great movie! Someone here will surely know.
Ealbert
@WaterGirl:
The movie was Starman.
WaterGirl
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: I agreed with a ton of that. Except the part where you said we should make them feel stupid.
I think they were conned by the con man. They were deliberately misled. They were lied to. And disrespected. Who wants to vote for someone who disrespects you?
Deputinize America
I dumbed my statements down to a sixth grade level via AI. It is punchier.
Ruckus
@Kelly:
I live on Social Security. I worked till I was 72 so my monthly is acceptable. Not great, going to sail around the world sized but it is more than enough. But if shitforbrains or his fucking rich buddy blows it up, there are going to be about 75 million people that are as pissed off as it is possible to get. Those on Social Security, like me paid in for all of our working lives so that others could do the same for us. And they are. And there is absolutely zero reason other than hate and control that shitforbrains and shitforbrains II might get to fuck it over. And there is zero logical reason for them to do it. They are doing this for control for power and because they are complete and utter assholes. But then we all know that.
WTFGhost
@Gloria DryGarden: Already answered. (Maybe by someone else, too.)
@trollhattan: College education isn’t as lucrative as you’d think, even in my day. A masters in math bought me a chance to become a genius in databases, but I wouldn’t have made much, otherwise.
@Ksmiami: Every time someone thinks Trumpism is a cult, and every T-voter is fully infected, they are forgetting how painfully ordinary evil really is. Legend has it, more than a few of the government officials in the room were suddenly stunned that Hitler intended to exterminate Jewish people… even though some of them knew full well that tens of thousands of prisoners were going *in*, but… without food, blankets, medical supplies, etc.. Plenty of Zyklone B, though.
I mean, they might as well have their faces covered in frosting, and be telling their wives they didn’t sneak a piece of cake, maybe it was one of the kids! There was no other thought a rational person could have come to, but, the camps were for exterminations.
Some of them left, undoubtedly wondering how to stop the now, clearly insane, Fuhrer.
People can deny evil, until it’s shoved in their faces. Then, some real sickos start to love it – those are your real cult members. Most recoil in horror.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
Here in Memphis the traffic signals are for all intents and purposes reversed. Red means floor it, and green does not mean go because you’ll get crushed by someone running the red.
You can tell when rural people come here to see a doctor or other specialist, because they don’t know these changes.
WaterGirl
@Doc Sardonic: Interesting! Especially this last part, where they could go back and re-learn a different way even after the fact.
Doc Sardonic
@WTFGhost: It’s kind of like driving in Atlanta. He who hesitates is rear ended, Red light means next 5 cars, There is no speed limit on 285, those signs are just to keep the feds happy.
WaterGirl
@Ealbert: Yes! Starman, thank you. I will have to see if that is streaming anywhere. Loved that movie.
Steve LaBonne
@Deputinize America: Short of a crisis that message simply doesn’t get through to normies. And even after a crisis they give Democrats 2 to 4 years to clean up the mess and that’s it. Nobody to this point has any useful thoughts on how to break that pattern. And the energy behind the pattern comes from white racial panic and male gender panic, which are not even dented by rational messages.
Salty Sam
That’s a BINGO! I entered the work force right at the start of the Reagan economy.
Doc Sardonic
@WaterGirl: They still have problems with processing “new” things but they are no longer hitting the wall like Wiley E. Coyote trying to go through the painted tunnel
eclare
@Doc Sardonic:
There was no speeding on 285 when I lived there because it was a parking lot pretty much 24/7.
Now the Alpharetta Autobahn…drive those horsies!
Baud
@Deputinize America:
👍
Bill Arnold
@eclare:
8 million dollars per day is noise to Mr. Musk.
On a typical recent day, his net worth fluctuates upwards or downwards multiples of billions of dollars.
Centibillionaires are not normal humans.
If a multi-billionaire gains or loses a billion dollars in a day, they are gaining or losing $11574 per second, over 24 hours.
Mr. Musk may gain $15 billion today. That would be $173611 per second, over 24 hours.
Gloria DryGarden
@p.a.: a portion of.
illustrating w an example from the chart.
let’s say 100 people are retirees in the some college group. 50 of them, rely on ss for over half (50%) of their retirement income.
20 of them actually are relying on ss for way over 50%; they rely on it for 90% or more, of their retirement income.
so, the over 90% folks are a sub group of the over 50% reliant group.
Expanding it, same group, same percentages, 10,000 people, retired, some college. Half , 5000 people, rely on ss for half or less, of their retirement income, meaning they have substantial or decent, othe4 resources. But half need s$ for more than half of their income, another 5000 people. And 20%, or 2000 people need ssi for most or all – over 90% of—their retirement income. It’s pretty much all they’ve got.
The bar graph is poorly labeled, and weird, harder to make sense of.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@WaterGirl: Well, if the idea is to make them feel despondent enough to not vote, wouldn’t making them feel stupid do that?
I suppose I could rephrase: indirectly pound it in how bad an idea it was to vote Trump back into office. But at the end of the day, with all the veneer scraped off, doing that results in making people feel stupid for their choices; what else would they feel when they realize they were conned when they’re incapable of placing their blame and ire on the person who conned them?
Ohio Mom
@WTFGhost: I’m not saying Trump isn’t evil, he is, but it’s mixed with jealousy, vengeance, ego and much else. Musk similarly is a stew of personality disorders.
But Vought seems to me to be pure evil. I haven’t seen any sign that anything else is motivating him. And he is so calm and measured, and skilled at letting the spotlight shine on others while he goes about his business in the shadows, sowing chaos, discord and ultimately, death.
WaterGirl
@eclare: So, what, you treat them as stop signs?
How can you possibly floor it when the light is red. Does. Not. Compute. at least not for me!
TONYG
@Bill Arnold: Yes. The level of wealth of someone like Elon is almost impossible for a normal human to understand. Elon could lose 90% of his wealth tomorrow, and he’d still have billions of dollars.
WaterGirl
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain:
I think making them feel stupid would engender a “fuck you!” response and lead them to vote because they think you’re an asshole, and “that will show you!”
Now, telling them that Trump, who promised to save them, in fact used them to get elected and then turned on them… now that I think could get someone to stay home, because then their anger is turned on Trump and the republicans.
Doc Sardonic
@WaterGirl: See my comment at 118
Deputinize America
@Steve LaBonne:
Oh, no doubt as to the drivers of the inherent racism and internalized misogyny that led to the 2024 defeat.
Gloria DryGarden
@Ealbert: i always remember that scene. He says yellow means go fast, really really fast.
adorable, because it was accurate, that’s how most people drive, at least sometimes. Especially at a light that stays green only long enough for 2 or 3 cars. You bet a few more would like to go, too.
TONYG
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: My half-baked understanding human psychology is the one of the reasons why people stay in religious or political cults is that they don’t want to admit, to themselves or others, that they were stupid to join the cult to begin with.
WaterGirl
@Doc Sardonic: I hope I never drive there!
TONYG
@Ohio Mom: Yes. Vought is the smart one. He just does his evil work without drawing attention to himself.
Betty
I completely agree with Krugman that the main problem with the old guard is their failure to express righteous outrage. That is is what is drawing crowds for Bernie and AOC. It is a genuine reflection of how people feel. We are under attack. Act like you get that.
Doc Sardonic
@eclare: Back in ‘93 my wife and several of her coworkers were sent to Atlanta for a training course and the all had rental cars. I had told my wife that if she drove with the flow of traffic on 285 she would be fine. One of her coworkers got pulled over by a pissed off Georgia State Trooper for driving the speed limit and told that he needed to drive with the traffic flow because he didn’t want to have to clean up the wreck he caused.
suzanne
@Doc Sardonic: When we lived in PHX, my in-laws came to visit, and my MIL, who grew up in rural Arkansas, said, “Apparently the speed limit is just a suggestion here”.
Yup.
WTFGhost
@Deputinize America: Hee. Spider Robinson once had an editor who told him to cut a 10k word story to 5k. First, he said “pretend I’ll pay you a thousand dollars for each thousand words you cut,” and Spider got it down to 7, so the editor said “pretend I’ll break one of your fingers for each thousand words you fail to cut.”
He finally got it down to 5000 words, and… goddamn, it *was* better. But I don’t think anyone truly likes that kind of smarty-pants editor, even if they like the results.
@WaterGirl: That, and, the biggest reason no one admits they were conned is, they were too embarrassed to be taken in by such a ridiculous ploy.
@WaterGirl: It’s a famous joke. “What does the yellow light mean?” “Slow down.”
“What… does… the… yellow…light… mean?” “SLOW DOWN!”
“Whaaaaaat…
Does… (etc.)”
@Belafon: Keep in mind that the BIG leader of the Republicans was Rush Limbaugh, who was not elected, and didn’t ever have to run for election.
@Doc Sardonic: I’ve heard it said that the best readers do not “hear” words, and that was one of the reasons they tried to skip phonics. A speed reading guide I read had better advice: “you can speak, inside your head, much faster than you can listen. If you want to use your finger to point to the page, or if you read ‘out loud’, do those, but try not to let them slow you down – do them as quickly as you can.” Kind of like doing wind sprints, but for reading.
I’ve found that I have to read “out loud” to myself, or my brain can’t retain the knowledge – I need both the ‘spoken’ and ‘read’ links. which makes the whole debate “sight read” versus “phonics” moot. But I’m really glad I learned phonics in the early 70s.
No One You Know
@Belafon: Yes! What you said here sounds like the abstract for my example.
Social Security pays for Medicare and housing for so many of us who had a hard time even when we got the education. Education won’t save us even if the lack of it increases the probability of a hard time.
Child care itself is socialization for living. When that goes wrong the ceiling drops for other adult achievements and markers as well. What doesn’t drop: the expectation that you get what you deserve.
tam1MI
Can we get rid of “kakistrocacy” as well?
eclare
@Doc Sardonic:
Wow. But I can see that. The last place I worked was in Dunwoody, and I lived in Garden Hills so I just used 400, usually took about 30 minutes.
For my coworkers who lived in Cobb County and used 285, it was usually an hour, but multiple hour commutes were not uncommon.
trollhattan
@Salty Sam:
I launched straight into stagflation. Whee! High unemployment + 17% mortgages = Howdy, landlord.
jonas
My sense is that (white) working class folks *do* understand that they’re heavily reliant on SS and other government programs, but their perception is that it’s all under threat from all the migrants, drug dealers, and other freeloaders mooching off the system, and Trump and Musk are going to go in there and make sure that only hard-working, patriotic Americans like them get the benefits they’re owed. Nothing will disabuse them of this until one day their own checks stop coming and they’ll be very confused and probably find a way to blame Biden or something.
Remember, the only thing you need to know about American politics is that it’s fundamentally animated by the gnawing fear that somewhere, somehow, an undeserving POC is receiving public benefits. (Corollary, I suppose, to Davis X. Machina’s observation about underpasses, sparrows, and curtain-rods.)
Doc Sardonic
@WTFGhost:
Seems like the educators are settling on combining the two. I learned to speed read by viewing pages as road signs, you read the whole sign at a glance rather than word at a time.
ironcity
@Bill Arnold: If that were miles per second instead of dollars per second he is getting richer at nearly the speed of light. Except it isn’t actual dollars in his Scrooge McDuck money bin, it’s the worth of equity positions in various enterprises and bitcoin. And that worth can slow down, stop, or reverse. I hope.
Kelly
@Ruckus: When discussing retirement finances with friends I always say SS check is the most reliable asset an ordinary American can have. It’s inflation adjusted annually! The checks we’re expecting will be enough to keep us warm, dry and fed no matter what the markets do.
Will they break the sign up mechanism before next year? Nobody knows.
Will they break the monthly deposit mechanism? Nobody knows.
Will they bullshit the inflation adjustments? Seems likely.
Longer term they’ll certainly make any adjustments to the trust fund unnecessarily painful to the likes of us so they can avoid any costs to the likes of them.
Steve LaBonne
@Doc Sardonic: The best available research says that both approaches are needed, perhaps in different proportions for different students.
Doc Sardonic
@eclare: Back in the day, there was a buffet restaurant and a movie theater on one of the Marietta exits south of Dobbins Air Force Base, that made a killing during rush hour. The buffet ran happy hour pricing and the theater had $1 movies.
eclare
@Doc Sardonic:
One coworker who lived in Cobb had a CPK where he would stop when traffic was too bad.
That buffet and theater were smart!
catclub
@hw3:
I will agree with you on those that voted for the asshole. I am not so sure about the ones who did not bother to vote. I am also not sure that the ones that did not bother to vote ever learned to tie their shoes.
Doc Sardonic
@Steve LaBonne: That was my mother’s theory, that both were needed, but the weighting of the two were by student need.
catclub
All of Proust in the time it takes to turn the pages!
James Joyce for dessert.
gvg
My parents did very well, mainly because of my father making pretty good money and being a good investor, however Medicare is VERY important to them because healthcare is serious money. I don’t think they ignore SS either, I know they have always voted with protecting it in mind. They were very frustrated with relatives who didn’t see through Regan and depended on SS then.
I think the educated voter may understand costs and risks better. The really rich would be different, but even the……regular rich, which we have far more of, probably know that some bad luck or bad health (for any member of the immedicate family) could blow it all and then they would need SS.
When you are really poor, you can do the math and figure out that there is no way to reach long term security, so in order not to go crazy or depressed, you enjoy a few things and try not to think about terrifying old age. Threats to jobs like companies moving work overseas really trigger a rage though.
catclub
@Kelly:
The news item (“Social Security will go broke in y years.”) is really about the excess cash taken in starting in the 1980’s, which is the trust fund. It will go to zero. Then, The present ( present in ten years) SS taxes will cover about 75% of the retiree obligations.
Captain C
@WaterGirl: It’s Starman, starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen
catclub
@Steve LaBonne:
Haha, Barack Obama had from Jan2009 to November 2010 – 20+1/2 months.
Miss Bianca
@Steve LaBonne: Your whole point is apropos, but this last part –
– is the money quote for me. How we break through that part remains a mystery. I am already fed up with all the meeping “oh, maybe Democrats were just too focused on the wimmenz, we have to somehow reassure white men that it’s OK to vote for us!” hot takes I’ve seen.
(Looking at you, Bulwark – I’ll still read them, but I’m getting mighty tired of the barely restrained note of Schadenfreude I’m sensing from their “Some Dems say Dems are still Doing It Rong!” think pieces I’ve been seeing from them lately.)
catclub
@WaterGirl:
yes. agreed. my repeated assertion
WTFGhost
@jonas: Well… it’s not just that, but it’s that at its root.
Bigots, in America, believe that Black people are genetically inferior, whether they believe the whole “Cain/Kingdom of Nob” or whatever story, or they just agree with their bigoted friends who’ve bent religion to their bigotry.
Whoops. I know, not all bigots.
Then there are people with ordinary racism and prejudice, who are sure Black and Hispanic people are robbing the programs, because why would so many nice people say the same thing, if it wasn’t true?
These are the people who a person might reach, but it will be hard, because the entire American Right Wing is repeating the same lie – “they’d be fine, except the democRATS use it to buy off minorities and furriners!”
Especially when the mainstream refuses to correct, or even highlight, the lies.
Lobo
@Deputinize America:
Here’s your message: Republicans tell you, ‘Work harder, and you’ll get ahead.’ But that’s not true—you’ve been working harder than ever, and your life isn’t getting better. The only people winning are the ones who started rich, and they’re using their power to keep things unfair.
cmorenc
@WaterGirl: people who fall for scams tend to strongly resist and resent being directly told they have been fools. They need instead be given enough seemingly nonthreatening pieces of information to inevitably come to the conclusion themselves that they’ve been scammed. Then, they are mad at themselves and the scammer instead of you.
Steve LaBonne
@Miss Bianca: It’s very unpleasant to squarely face the reality that nobody has had a clue what to do about it since Reagan’s time. I understand why people want to believe that repeating the same economic messages Democrats have been delivering all along, but maybe louder or worded differently, will work. But it won’t. I don’t have a clue about what to do instead, any more than anyone else does. Racism and misogyny are so deeply entrenched and those most susceptible to stewing in them have never been reachable in any way that we know of.
WTFGhost
@WaterGirl: I agree. If someone respects you highly, and they have been stupid, you get to make them feel stupid… gently, because you want them to see the light they missed first time around. If you tell Trump voters “many of y’all made a stupid choice,” they’ll go all “basket of deplorables” on you.
(Remember: when Hillary mentioned “deplorables” she was talking about the literal Nazis and queer-stompers he surrounded himself with. It doesn’t matter how true it is – they’ll lie, and say *you* think they’re stupid, or bigots. )
If I wanted to make my gaming group (when I could gamemaster a game, or pay attention long enough to roleplay – yes, you gamers can gasp in horror, I can’t run a 15 minute, well planned scenario any longer.
Where was I? Being self-pitying. Right! If I wanted a hypothetical gaming group to maybe question their intelligence, I’d say something like, “I can’t believe those poor Haitians thought they were doing Trump a favor, by not raising a stink over the “dog-eating/cat-eating” slander, and now, he’s going to deport them.”
That’s a story – not as long as my normal one, which means it’s probably better. And it’s a throwaway line, not like, a big speech, just, when I shook my head, “where are we, who’s discovered which secrets (NB: no actual secrets – but you gotta keep the players off balance!) – gawd. You know, I can’t believe…”
“… sorry folks, I got political a moment. Um. Right – SlyTell, the thief, you were climbing a wall, please roll under a 20 to avoid dying (NB: no chance of dying, but, again…).
Kelly
@catclub: Yep, trust fund depletion is an easily managed problem. Lift the cap on income subject to the SS tax and 75% goes back to 100%.
Timill
@Kelly: That doesn’t address the real problem, which is that the trust fund is just sitting there and not in any multibillionaires’ bank accounts…
barbequebob
@Gloria DryGarden:
I can’t be sure, but to me, logically the group that depends on SS for >90% would be a subset of the people >50%, and would be included in the >50%, so you can’t add those two together.
chemiclord
The problem is that far, far too many ARE paying attention, and would rather cut the rope and fall to their death if it meant they’d take a black family with them. They ARE voting with their interests. The problem is their interests are vile.
Trump voters weren’t duped. They weren’t brainwashed. They walked in with eyes wide open. They didn’t and don’t care.
And they never will, no matter how blunt or simple or loud the message is.
Citizen Alan
Yeah, but the vast majority of elected GOPs DID go to prep schools! They just actively cultivate accents and mannerisms and dumb down their vocabulary in order to win votes from the belligerently ignorant. Like how, when I was in private practice in Mississippi, I adopted a thick drawl when meeting clients (or, TBH, talking with family members) that melted away like snow in summer the second I got to NYC for my LLM.
Citizen Alan
@suzanne: How about just calling them “our rulers.” Maybe the lower class MAGAs might get a clue if they ever understand how the people they vote for want them all to be serfs.
TONYG
@Steve LaBonne: Yes. Although I would argue that it’s been this way since the beginning of the Nixon administration (1969). A famous (at the time) Nixon slogan was that he represented “the silent majority” — poorly disguised code language for white men (who did not challenge the hierarchy). In 1972 Nixon was re-elected with one of the biggest landslides in history. The rot in this country is deep and it has an existed for centuries. Trump is just the latest, most extreme manifestations of it.
Citizen Alan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I still say Arne Duncan was the worst thing Obama ever did.
Gloria DryGarden
@barbequebob: right. Thank you. It took me awhile, but I did catch up to that. I’m usually math adept, I’m glad others helped us all w this graph.
Citizen Alan
@tam1MI: Hell no! Because using the word kakistocracy allows us to define kakistocracy to listeners. “Kakistocracy means we are ruled by the shittiest, most disgusting people who can be found. That’s who you voted for.”
Citizen Alan
@catclub: He didn’t even have that. Norm Coleman prevented Al Franken from taking office for months with baseless election fraud claims until July of 2009. Teddy Kennedy died a month later, and that stupid fool Martha Coakley lost the special election to the Himbo who took office in February of 2010. That was about seven months when Obama’s legislative agenda wasn’t stalled by the GOP filibuster.
LAC
@jonas: 💯
Maybe talk real gently and have a POC stand nearby to gently smile so that they can see that we are not scary? /s
Pain may have to be experienced for it to penetrate. If the only thing some of these folks get from climbing a mountain of shit is resenting my black face there next to them climbing the same mountain, then I dunno…
Martin
There’s two crises here. The first is the imminent gutting and looting of SS/Medicare. The second is that if we avoid that, we’re back to the old crisis of having these programs underfunded.
You have to go back to the origins of the program to see the solution. Look at the divergence in the chart under B starting in the 1970s, when wages and GDP moved in lockstep. These programs were created and funded at a time when wages and GDP were interchangeable, and taxing employers on GDP was effectively impossible – who the fuck knows their share of GDP, but taxing employers are wages was easy – every employer knows what they pay workers. So we funded the social safety nets off of the easy calculation not knowing that computers were coming, and robots, and AI and all of the ways that you can now generate GDP without having to pay wages. And because the tax is on wages, and not on other forms of value-add, the federal government is effectively subsidizing the elimination of workers, or the outsourcing of them. Running your call center out of India at the very least gets you out of those payroll taxes because they aren’t US workers eligible for OASDI deductions.
There are lots of calls to lift the exemption on contributions for high wage earners, but the real answer lies in the gap in that graph. Replace payroll taxes with a comparable value-add tax on the corporation. Not the kind like Europe uses which sits as an add-on tax that the consumer pays, but as a corporate tax that would replace payroll taxes. Effectively a lower rate tax on gross profits (or some minor variation of that which is a reasonable measure of the value-add of a corporation). Now you’ve eliminated the automation subsidy because the robot now incurs the same tax liability as the worker, and you’ve filled in the roughly 50% of contributions that were lost to automation since the time that wages and GPD were tightly coupled, and OASDI would once again be tightly coupled to GDP, as it originally was intended to be.
Ruckus
I am an old, early SS retirement age of 63 was a long time ago. It just feels like a long, long, long time ago.
I actually retired just shy of 3 yrs ago. So my only income is SS and the amount isn’t bad, and my last deposit, was made on time. I’m not holding my breath waiting for the next one.
sab
@No One You Know: I hear you so clearly. I had a happy childhood with well-adjusted prosperous parents.
I see my step-daughter (grew up early years in very bad foster care, and her step-daughter, with meth-head parents, struggle so hard well into adulthood to get to the emotional solid space where I had already just landed by chance at age twelve.)
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@WaterGirl:
Hence why I wrote here:
Ruckus
@eclare:
I must not be anywhere close to average because my very nearly 60 yrs of input into SS gets me a not insignificant bit more than that. Now I did also work well past the average retirement age and at a rather decent pay level so my input was not insignificant.
WaterGirl
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: Agee with that. I hadn’t connected the two comments in my head.
Ruckus
@Salty Sam:
If SS goes away, I am fucked.
As would be millions of us, all so some rich MF’s can get just a bit richer. At our expense, seeing as how to retire with a reasonable SS income one has to either be very well paid or work far more than 45 years. As stated above I started working for a paycheck when I was 13 and worked for 60 yrs, and retired just a tad older than 63. That tad is doing a fair bit of work. But my SS retirement is not bad.