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#SocialSecurity

7 posts7 participants1 post today

Former SSA officials & congressional Dems said they were appalled by what they viewed as a highly political email being sent to Americans by a fed agency.

🚨“This email went to every #SocialSecurity subscriber & EVERY WORD IS A LIE. Social Security benefits are still taxed. This big, ugly bill doesn’t change that,” -Rep Pallone, the top Dem on the Energy & Comm CMTE. “It’s disturbing to see Trump hijack a public inst to push blatant misinformation.”
#Gaslighting #USPol nbcnews.com/politics/trump-adm

What Scottish Independence Could Deliver For The Welfare State

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.” – Marcus Aurelius

This blog post previously appeared in The National as part of Common Weal’s In Common newsletter.
If you’d like to support my work for Common Weal or support me and this blog directly, see my donation policy page here.

Back in the early days of Common Weal, while we were still finding our feet and building our reputation, we had an informal rule when it came to policy-making. We had to be able to show the policy working somewhere else.

This was because we felt that Scotland simply wasn’t ready for some of the radical ideas that we wanted to implement so being able to show it already working was a good way of building confidence in a nation too often told “we cannae dae it” (by which our opponents often mean “we shouldnae dae it” which is a different thing entirely).

We’ve since dispensed with that rule and we sometimes broke it even then (one of Common Weal’s very first policy papers, “In Place Of Anxiety”, was an advocacy for Universal Basic Income (UBI) long before it became one of the “cool” policies) but this isn’t to say that we can’t learn lessons from elsewhere.

Just this week, I was asked by a researcher which of our neighbour nations I’d like Scotland to copy if I could. My answer was that we shouldn’t copy any one but that I take a lot of inspiration from Germany on local democracy, from Denmark on energy strategy and from Norway for public ownership. Somewhere else we could do with taking inspiration from our neighbours is on social security.

The scenes this week from the UK’s attempts to hammer the poor and disabled and only backing down after shambolic chaos in the Parliament should be a lesson not just in humanity but in policy-making as well. Never fight a battle you haven’t won in advance. Never assume a large on-paper majority means certain absolute power.

With many of our neighbours basing their politics on proportional representation and coalition politics, this kind of legislation would have undergone a lot of negotiation and compromise long before arriving at the voting chamber.

The way that many of our neighbours deal with the issue of social security is markedly different from the UK in several ways. The first is that the systems are a lot more generous in general. Norway, Denmark and Sweden rank in the top three OECD nations for spending on disability protections at above 3% of GDP while the UK is well below the OECD average at less than 2%.

Many more social securities like unemployment protections follow a different model from the UK when they are calculated. In particular, instead of the flat rate paid under the UK’s Universal Credit, many countries follow a model where the protection you receive is based on a percentage of your previous income.

There are consequences to each of these models. A flat rate tends to be more redistributive if it is generous enough (which Universal Credit isn’t) whereas a proportional rate tends to be less disruptive to an individual who is already going through the shock of losing their job while still having bills to pay.

We’ve seen these impacts in the UK too. During the pandemic, the Covid furlough scheme was paid at a proportional rate to people who were employed but was often paid at a flat Universal Credit rate to self-employed people. This exposed a lot of people who were previously on the side of denigrating poor and vulnerable people as lazy slackers to just how meagre and cruel the UK “benefits” system is.

We had an opportunity then to get some serious change off the back of that and maybe we still see echoes of it in this week’s chaos but largely the Powers That Be wanted to make us forget that moment of reflection as quickly as possible.

On the other side and as tempting as it might be to copy a European-style unemployment insurance based on previous income, and as beneficial that would be to people in well-paid but otherwise insecure jobs, we have to remember that many people are not in well-paid jobs and that wage suppression has been rife in the UK for decades. Receiving 60% of your previous income when you were being paid poverty wages won’t protect you from poverty in unemployment.

So maybe rather than Scotland – particularly an independent Scotland – copying existing social security policies from our neighbours, we need to look to them for inspiration in another way and look back at that paper I mentioned at the start of this column.

Last year, the EU think tank the Coppieters Foundation published a paper called “A European Universal Basic Income” which found that a UBI sufficient to eradicate poverty across the entire union could be entirely paid for by relatively modest changes to income tax and the savings found from the reduction of poverty itself.

Its model called for a UBI of €6,857 per year for adults and half that for children under 14. This is the equivalent of £113 per week for adults and £57 per week for children. The paper claimed that the increase in income taxes to pay for this level of UBI would themselves be relatively modest and the “breakeven” point for people who’d pay more income tax than they’d receive in UBI would be at around the 80th percentile.

In other words, eight out of 10 people would be directly better off with the UBI. And, to repeat, while this is still a relatively small sum per person if you have no other income, it would be enough to eradicate poverty across the entire EU and would be cheaper overall – after the health, crime and social inequality costs of poverty are factored in – than the current systems.

When this paper came out I argued that this meant a UBI was now a moral imperative because it was cheaper than the cost of poverty, but there’s clearly a financial imperative too. Whether we’re discussing an independent Scotland seeking to create a better country for all of us or even just a cynical UK trying to save money in the face of a humiliating attempt to crush the poor, here is a solution we should all support. Eradicate poverty, save money, implement a Universal Basic Income.

The National · What Scottish independence could deliver for the welfare stateBy Common Weal

#Disinformation: #SocialSecurity email praising Trump’s tax bill is a lie

The #SSA sent an email claiming Trump’s bill eliminated taxes on benefits for most recipients.

The reconciliation bill–which #Trump called the #OneBigBeautifulBill before signing it after #Republicans in #Congress passed it–will strip people of their #HealthInsurance, cut #FoodAssistance for the #poor, kill off #CleanEnergy development & raise the #NationalDebt by trillions.

#propaganda
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j

The Guardian · ‘Blatant misinformation’: Social Security Administration email praising Trump’s tax bill blasted as a ‘lie’By Oliver Milman
Continued thread

Lawson contends that the email praising Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' violates the Hatch Act, a law against partisan political activity by federal government employees."

And that's why I call the email illegal.

I unsubscribed from all emails from Social Security after I got this politicized pack of lies in my inbox.

#Trump #BigBeautifulBill #SocialSecurity
/3

Continued thread

"'[For Social Security to send out an overtly political email like this is] completely unprecedented,' said Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, a left-leaning advocacy organization focused on retirement benefits. 'It's an enormous breach of trust.'"

#Trump #BigBeautifulBill #SocialSecurity
/2

usatoday.com/story/news/politi

USA TODAY · Unusual Social Security email touts Trump bill. Here's what to know.By , USA TODAY

Yahoo's main page right now is featuring a splashy headline (below) which says that we seniors who got Social Security's illegal email yesterday praising Trump's big, beautiful bill may have been "confused" by that email.

I beg to differ. I was not confused.

I was outraged, because the email was full of lies.

Also, as the article attached to Yahoo's headline, by Ben Adler in USA Today, says,

#Trump #BigBeautifulBill #SocialSecurity
/1

Trump and his people are lying to seniors that taxes on #SocialSecurity have been eliminated.

Reality: Seniors 65+ get a temporary tax break if total adjusted gross income is $75K or less ($150K for couples filing jointly). The deduction EXPIRES in 2028. cbsnews.com/news/big-beautiful

This morning I woke up to email propaganda from the US federal government. On the 4th of July. The small things are also abhorrent.

"The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long-awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans."

It goes on with a pack of lies that I won't subject you to. 🤬
#uspol #SocialSecurity
#LiesLiesLies

Already on this great (US) holiday, I had to throw up in my mouth.

I got an email from the official Social Security account telling me how great my life is going to be because of the tax cuts in the Big Ugly Garbage Bill.

Here is some math for you. Currently 20% of my tiny ($1200/month) SS payment counts as taxable income toward my almost non existent federal income taxes. So, excluding that last 20% might "save" me a couple of hundred a year.

On the other hand, I currently pay 25% of my SS income in Medicare and supplement premiums. This 25% does not include any out of pocket medical costs I might incur.

How do you think taking medical coverage from millions of people is going to affect my medical costs? Additionally, I live in a smaller city. I am guessing that in the next 10 years my medical access will deteriorate significantly as providers close and leave, killing my quality of life and eventually me, much sooner than would have happened otherwise.

So, thanks for the "tax cuts" that will probably bankrupt and kill me.