CATO POTATO (elegant reasoning)

Michael Brun brun at uiuc.edu
Mon Jan 25 19:58:31 PST 1999


Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 19:46:06 -0500 From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Subject: elegant reasoning


>From the Cato Institute's Social Security Project
<http://www.socialsecurity.org>:

"Since blacks and the poor have shorter life spans than whites and high-income earners, Social Security transfers money from blacks to whites and from the poor to the rich, a reverse Robin Hood program. Since the median life expectancy for a black male born today is only 65.8 years, half of all black men will never collect a single retirement check from Social Security. Only a personalized Social Security system can end this discrimination."

-- Joel Mowbray

CURE

Is the median life expectancy for black (why only males?) males taken all together the same as the median life expectancy for those black males participating in the social security system? I bet the answer is no, the latter live longer. Count in females and the game is up for CATO. Just goes to show, there are millions of numbers out there; so go ahead and pick the ones you want.

Now if CATO had chosen to address the regressivity of the Social Security tax, why then they'd be on to something. I wonder how they could have missed that.

Michael Brun



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