Fast Takes: How not to save Social Security, – Latest News
Economist: How Not To Save Social Security
New figures show the Social Security trust fund may “be exhausted” by 2032, stories Andrew G. Biggs at National Review, however the plan from Sens. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) and Elizabeth Warren (D- Mass.) to save it by “eliminating the payroll tax cap” would make the issue worse.
It would “create massive incentives to shift compensation to non-taxable” income, “reduce economic growth and, with it, [tax] revenues” and immediate employers to slash wages, slicing income additional. Plus, it could increase advantages, defeating the supposed objective.
“What Social Security reform desperately needs” is planners who “understand the purpose of a social insurance program — namely, to protect poor seniors, survivors, and the disabled,” and not to change “what households and private markets can better provide on their own.”
Censorship beat: Propagandists Run Wikipedia
“Not even a co-founder” of Wikipedia “can edit it if he is attempting to implement his program of reform,” fumes Larry Sanger on the Washington Examiner, after discovering that “a relatively small clique of anonymous administrators” can ban customers who counter the location’s “propagandist bent.”
It’s grabbed “the attention of the global internet”: “Powerful admins routinely gang up on people who don’t fall in line,” operating a “dictatorship of the twee.” “Special-interest Wikipedia editorial groups” run “offline discussion groups,” some funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, to “edit articles of keen interest to progressives” with money coming from “the state of Qatar, the Gates Foundation, and Libya’s sovereign wealth fund.”
Linguist: People, Not Guns, Kill People
The time period “gun violence” has grown “so common it’s easy to miss how strained it is,” eradicating the “the actual person doing the violence” to absurdly recommend that “guns are committing the violence,” warns John McWhorter at The New York Times.
This “lexical politesse” “obscures the vivid picture of something horrible that happens disproportionately in black communities,” as a result of “even as crime has gone down” it stays “tragically ordinary for young black men to be shot in poor black neighborhoods.”
The concept appears to be to “create a new term for something” to “get people to think about it differently,” after we actually need “action so that eventually there isn’t anything more to euphemize about.”
China beat: Miracles of Freedom Needed
After “266 days in a Chinese prison,” “I was reunited with my family” on the eve of America’s birthday, explains Pastor Ezra Jin at The Wall Street Journal. “My gratitude goes first to President Trump” after which “to the members of Congress and other US officials” who pushed Beijing for his release. “I expected a long sentence for founding and leading Zion,” one of China’s “house churches,” however when “guards ushered me into a van last Friday . . . I was free.”
Yet 28 different Zion leaders and “eight of my fellow church members” stay imprisoned; “I won’t rest until they see freedom.” China’s leaders have “no reason to fear” those that “want to worship God peacefully according to the Bible.” “I hope all our church members are freed,” although it could appear “impossibly remote.” “Mine is a God of miracles, and he constantly surprises me.”
Prison watch: Don’t Kneecap Vital Reforms
“Violent crime is falling nationwide, with murders on track to be the lowest since 1900,” David Safavian and Justin Keener cheer at The Hill.
Yet proposed federal funds cuts would “undo this progress.” With President Trump’s First Step Act and new funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Bureau of Prisons leaders have “implemented initiatives to stop contraband, increase security and cut recidivism,” now down to 45%.
Yet the “cuts would fall hardest on the front-line professionals” doing this work and so “undercut crime control.”
Bureau leaders have “rejected the status quo and brought about a new vision for improving corrections to make our communities safer.” Congress should step up “to make that vision a reality.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
