One point of course is, its just another lie … Editorial: Social Security/Blacks get more, not less, from it

Of all the lies — let’s call them by their right name — that the Bush administration is spreading about Social Security, none is as vile as the canard Bush repeated last Tuesday, when he said, “African-American males die sooner than other males do, which means the [Social Security] system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people. And that needs to be fixed.” That is an entirely phony assertion; it has been debunked by the Social Security Administration, by the Government Accountability Office and by other experts. Bush and those around him know that. For them to repeat what they know to be a blatant lie is despicable fear-mongering.
Bush didn’t make up this phony line on his own; it comes from the Heritage Foundation, which a number of years ago did a study purporting to show that because African-Americans have a shorter life expectancy than whites, they get less in return for the taxes they pay into the Social Security system.
But when the Heritage study was examined by actuaries at the Social Security Administration and by the Government Accountability Office, serious methodological flaws and numerous bad assumptions were uncovered. For example: …

Posted by: b | Jan 26 2005 20:15 utc | 1