Bravo to Michael Lind, writing for Salon, for daring to challenge media conventional wisdom—that the country can no longer support Social Security and those who depend on it. For his smart, clear essayattempting to reframe the discussion, Lind deserves a CJR laurel.
We have been reporting for some time about how the public debate over Social Security’s future has been too narrowly defined, noting that a number of Beltway press types have fallen for and passed along the notion that “greedy geezers” have brought the program to the edge of bankruptcy, and thus that something must be done about “entitlements.” We’ve argued that many in the media have engaged in one-sided reporting, “using ‘facts’ that are flat-out wrong while ignoring others” about such things as the demographics of Social Security, the stability of the trust fund supporting it, as well as the options for filling its shortfall.
The “greedy geezer” framing has crowded out serious discussion on the larger problem— America’s looming retirement crisis.
Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in his critique of faux balance in the press, argues that the journalistic imperative to balance out opposing points of view often winds up obscuring an issue more than illuminating it. Social Security could well be his exhibit A.
In the last piece of a three-part series, Lind, a co-founder of the New America Foundation, argues that tax-favored private pensions, IRAs, and 401(k)s are inefficient, volatile, and subject to manipulation by money managers, whereas Social Security is:
Simple and efficient, and has low overhead costs. And yet the bipartisan establishment, including many ‘progressive’ Democrats as well as Republicans, want to cut Social Security—the part that works—and expand tax-favored private savings, the inefficient, unstable and inequitable part.
So who wants to cut it? Lind explains: “While cutting Social Security makes no sense at all in terms of economics or public policy, it makes excellent sense in terms of the selfish class interests of the super-rich.” Lind notes that not only have the super-rich reaped half the gains from economic growth in the last 50 years, they’ve also recycled “some of their profits to fund politicians and lobbyists, as well as mercenary propagandists who pose as neutral think tank experts.” He could have added that those experts are the ones many in the media rely on to flesh out their stories, which, in turn, focus on the need for cutting entitlement programs rather than on the financial needs of most of their recipients.
Thomas Edsall, writing in The New York Times, gets to why the rich might feel threatened, an underlying point that most of the press has pretty much ignored. Edsall noted:
The conservative political class recognizes that the halcyon days of shared growth with the United States leading the world economy may be over. The wealthy are acutely aware that the political threat to their status and comfort would come from rising popular demand for policies of income redistribution.

Lind reports that Social Security doesn’t mean much to the super-wealthy. They don’t need the money, he writes, like 80 percent of Americans do. For those not among the super-rich, even small cuts like those imposed on beneficiaries by the Chained CPI, an alternative calculation for cost-of-living increases, could add up to a king’s ransom over time, as the cuts compound. On the other hand, the wealthiest 20 percent receive 80 of their income from tax-favored retirement accounts like 401(k)s, Lind reports.
Ordinary men and women on the street—the ones we see everyday—aren’t buying the notion of benefit cuts. “Elite discourse on the subject is radically at odds with public opinion,” Lind says. He cites a recent Pew poll finding that only 10 percent of Americans want to cut Social Security while 41 percent want to increase its benefits, a finding that’s hardly surprising. Most people on Social Security know they need it and would have a tough time surviving if the monthly payments did not arrive. Other polls show high public support for the program.