This delicious list came from the fine folks at MoveOn.org, who generally do a great job at getting the truth out to people who desperately need it, and wind up being a massive political force that actually has some serious accomplishments under their belt.

Myth #1: Social Security is going broke.

Reality: There is no Social Security crisis. By 2023, Social Security will have a $4.6 trillion surplus (yes, trillion with a ‘T’). It can pay out all scheduled benefits for the next quarter-century with no changes whatsoever.1 After 2037, it’ll still be able to pay out 75% of scheduled benefits—and again, that’s without any changes. The program started preparing for the Baby Boomers’ retirement decades ago.2 Anyone who insists Social Security is broke probably wants to break it themselves.

Myth #2: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.

Reality: This is a red-herring to trick you into agreeing to benefit cuts. Retirees are living about the same amount of time as they were in the 1930s. The reason average life expectancy is higher is mostly because many fewer people die as children than they did 70 years ago.3 What’s more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly—since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half.4 But those intent on cutting Social Security love this argument because raising the retirement age is the same as an across-the-board benefit cut.

Myth #3: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.

Reality: Social Security doesn’t need to be fixed. But if we want to strengthen it, here’s a better way: Make the rich pay their fair share. If the very rich paid taxes on all of their income, Social Security would be sustainable for decades to come.5 Right now, high earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,000 of their income.6 But conservatives insist benefit cuts are the only way because they want to protect the super-rich from paying their fair share.

Myth #4: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs

Reality: Not even close to true. The Social Security Trust Fund isn’t full of IOUs, it’s full of U.S. Treasury Bonds. And those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.7 The reason Social Security holds only treasury bonds is the same reason many Americans do: The federal government has never missed a single interest payment on its debts. President Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market—which would have been disastrous—but luckily, he failed. So the trillions of dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are separate from the regular budget, are as safe as can be.

Myth #5: Social Security adds to the deficit

Reality: It’s not just wrong—it’s impossible! By law, Social Security’s funds are separate from the budget, and it must pay its own way. That means that Social Security can’t add one penny to the deficit.8

You can read the full list, complete with citations and facts that back up these statements, at the link below:

[ Top 5 Social Security Myths ]
Source: MoveOn.org

You’ll have to click the image above to enlarge – it’s really illuminating.

People have been speculating for a long time about Glenn Beck’s associations with Goldline, and how every time he screams insensibly about the coming economic apocalypse that will be of course completely the fault of liberals everywhere, that you should invest in gold and hide under your mattress until it all blows over and only the good Christian conservatives are left.

What Beck doesn’t tell all of us is exactly how closely related he is to Goldline, and exactly how much money he — and they — rake in from his fearmongering.

Over at the blog The Big Picture, this fantastic timeline of exactly how Glenn Beck is fleecing his viewers and listeners came to light, and it’s amazing to read.

Perhaps one of the best things I’ve seen come through my inbox these past several days is an op-ed in the New York Times by a former financial official in the Reagan Treasury Department where he all but comes clean about the ridiculous damage that the Republican party has done to the US Economy, and how the blame – as it should be – is laid squarely at the feet of the Bush Administration and their fiscal policies of unregulated, laissez-faire business practices.

Instead of regulating the industries that are falling apart around us today by leaking oil into our waterways or foreclosing on our homes, the Bush Administration claimed that the best way to keep the economy going was to let the party keep rolling, no matter what the damage in the long run – and we’re seeing that damage now (and may not see the end of it for generations.)

And yet, Republicans in Congress want to continue the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy – you remember the ones, the ones that were supposed to stimulate so much job growth and investment in small businesses but did neither of those things (but did wind up as a massive payout to the wealthiest few percent of the American populace?) Of course you do, as does David Stockman:

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.

Stockman then goes on to explain the four significant ways that these policies have caused serious harm to the US economy, and what their true impact may be. He even twists the screws a bit on the topic of our out-of-control military spending, which seems to be skyrocketing regardless of the party you support (although Democrats have lately expressed interest in bringing in the military budget and Defense Secretary Gates asked his generals to find areas where they could trim the fat.)

The entire piece is worth a read, especially if you find you have a short memory for fiscal policy, or if you know a right-winger who thinks the economy only tanked when President Obama took office and seek to blame him. There’s plenty of blame to go around – the real problem is that the political right doesn’t have the will to actually fix the problem.

[ Four Deformations of the Apocalypse ]
Source: The New York Times