Michael Hiltzik: An exhaustive debunking of the dumbest myths about Social Security
Myths and canards about Social Security and its supposed fiscal troubles have steadily proliferated over the years. But it’s rare to find them all concentrated in one place as they were in a recent article on the online news site Slate.
Slate paired Eric Boehm, a writer for the conservative magazine Reason, with a writer named Celeste Headlee for a dialogue titled “ Social Security Doesn’t Make Sense Anymore.” The roughly 2,000-word piece contained so many misconceptions, inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies about the program that I almost gave up counting. That said, it’s perhaps worthwhile to have a one-stop shop for all these sophistries, if only for the purpose of debunking them en masse.
The article called for a “radical rethink” of Social Security to make it somehow more relevant to Americans in the modern world. Boehm and Headlee evidently think that’s a world in which America is on the brink of insolvency and can’t afford to spend another dime on the disadvantaged, that Social Security recipients are rich, and that older Americans can have their pick of jobs that
