Paul Henry Rosenberg wrote
[snipped Cato bs]
>From "Social Security and People of Color" by Kilolo Kijakazi, Senior
>analyst at the
>Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
> http://www.cbpp.org/10-5-98socsec.htm :
>"The Heritage methodology assumes that white men who work until 65 will
>receive 9.3 years of retirement benefits (from age 65 to 74.3), while
>African-American men who work until 65 will receive just 2.2 years of
>retirement benefits (from 65 to 67.2 years of age). This is flatly
>wrong. The age that an individual is expected to attain changes over his
>or her lifetime. If a man reaches age 65, he is expected to live 15.5
>additional years if he is white and 13.5 more years if he is
>African-American. Heritage thus heavily underestimated the number of
>years that these men, and especially African-American men, will draw
>Social Security retirement benefits."
[snipped data]
>A very good case study in the Heritage Foundation's basic methodology of
>deceit.
Amen. A similar deceit is practiced by privatizers on the use of age 65 for retirement. The deceit is that the evil guvmint picked 65 because in 1935, life expectancy was 58 for men, 62 for women, and thus Social Security was designed as a rip-off because nobody would live to collect benefits.
What Cato and Heritage and the liars on the internet don't say is that those are life expectancy figures at birth, and as Paul points out, each year you successfully make it changes your life expectancy. More than half of men who made it to 21 could be expected to reach 65.
Second, Cato, and other liars, ignore the survivor benefits. It is true that blacks have a lower life expectancy than whites, I think at almost any age but I'm not sure of that. However, wives and minor children benefit from the survivors insurance provision of Social Security. It is galling that Right Wing bastards use the argument of racial inequity (which is true enough) to attempt to deny minorities an important benefit.
-- Homines id quod volunt credunt.