About Me 0116: Making Money Program

Deficit Commission Co-Chair Erskine Bowles Falsely Claims Social Security ‘Runs Out Of Money In 2037′

Last week, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, released a report outlining their recommendations for reducing the federal budget deficit. One of their most contentious proposals is to gradually raise the retirement age to 69, a move the co-chairs claim is meant to maintain the system’s solvency.

This morning, Simpson and Bowles appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss their proposals. At one point, Simpson explained his view that balancing the budget would require going “to where the meat is. And the meat is health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.” Host Joe Scarborough then complained that while AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka attacked the proposals for cutting Social Security, Scarborough said he doesn’t think the co-chairs went far enough (co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed). Bowles then defended their proposal, saying, “What we’ve done is make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. As you all know, Social Security runs out of money in 2037. We’re not making it up. That’s the law”:

SIMPSON: You’ve gotta go where the meat is. And the meat is health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Not balancing the books on the backs of poor old staggering seniors to make the damn thing solvent for 75 years.

SCARBOROUGH: We were stunned, Erskine, by some of the things that were said after the commission report came out, saying, “Seniors are going to be thrown out on the street!” I looked at the numbers to be really honest with you, and I didn’t think you moved fast enough on Social Security and Medicare. We calculated that I guess, it was Trumka, who I like very much, Trumka said that this throws old people out. My two year old son Jack will get Social Security at 69. People in their 20′s and 30′s will be just fine.

BRZEZINSKI: In fact, I think you could’ve gone further.

SIMPSON: I know Rich very well. He’s a good egg. He has to say for what he has to say for his membership. But he knows I’m right.

BOWLES: What we’ve done is make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. As you all know, Social Security runs out of money in 2037. We’re not making it up. That’s the law.

Watch it:

Social Security is currently projected to be fully solvent until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which basically equals full benefits, once inflation is accounted for. There is no threat of the program running out of money any time soon — certainly not in 2037. That does not mean that there aren’t positive and progressive changes that could possibly be made to the system.

However, the hike in retirement age that the MSNBC co-hosts and deficit commission co-chairmen are praising would be a very punitive way to ensure further solvency. As a Government Accountability Office report recently obtained by the AP found, “Raising the retirement age for Social Security would disproportionately hurt low-income workers and minorities, and increase disability claims by older people unable to work.”

Scaborough may not be entirely wrong to shrug off the possibility of his son Jack retiring at 69, if his son ends up being in the same socioeconomic class as him. Almost all of the gains in life expectancy over the past few decades have been among upper income earners. If current trends continue, middle and lower class Americans will see very little gain in life expectancy by the time the co-chairs plan to hike the retirement age. And “nearly half of workers over the age of 58 work at jobs that are either physically demanding or involve difficult work conditions,” meaning that if those trends continue, blue-collar workers will be hurt particularly hard by raising the retirement age.

Unfortunately, most Americans are not highly-paid TV hosts like Brzezinski and Scarborough.

This post is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that focuses on a new and innovative startup each day. Once a week, the program focuses on startups within the BizSpark program and what they’re doing to grow.

Consumer electronics search engine and review site Retrevo had the best traffic day in its four-year history on Monday. But unlike Cyber Mondays of the past, site visitors who were browsing the site’s comprehensive reviews also had the option to buy electronics without leaving the Retrevo site.

In the past two months, the company has been dipping its toes into e-commerce — an industry that it plans to dive into fully next year. The site’s long-time sources of revenue have been advertising and cost-per-click fees it collects by referring its users to electronic retailer sites. Since launching e-commerce components, such as its daily deals, it has more than doubled its monthly revenue.

To complement the new strategy, the company is launching a new search engine today that allows consumers to search accessories, the major portion of its product offerings, by entering a specific electronic device they wish to accessorize.

Taking this leap into e-commerce was something of a risk for CEO Vipin Jain. E-commerce is a decidedly different industry than review indexing, and there was a question of whether readers who trusted the site for information would also trust the site with their money (the answer thus far appears to be that they will).

Mashable recently chatted with Jain about making the transition that he says is likely to triple annual revenue.

Building a Strong Frame

Retrevo built a 6-million-unique-users-per-month user base for its search and review engine before it decided to start selling products itself. And although selling electronics is turning out to be much more profitable than recommending them, the four years that it spent refining this system were an important component in building the site’s e-commerce success.

For one thing, customers already trust the site. “We probably would not have had this much success with e-commerce if we had not gone through building the trust with the information and reviews and recommendations first,” Jain says. “I think that where we are and where we think the company is going to be, I think that is a result of having that belief in the recommendation and the advice we are giving them. It is easier for them to open their wallets and give us money to buy products.”

It’s also unlikely that consumers would choose to buy from the site if it were just another Amazon-like retailer. The comprehensive reviews, which make it easy for people without a lot of technical knowledge to pick out a product, is the reason that people will continue to visit the site. And, as Jain sees it, the commerce component is a way of completing this easy-to-navigate experience. Instead of sending customers to a third-party site that might be confusing, users can easily complete their checkout where they started their search.

Changing Course

Earlier this year, when Retrevo started planning for the switch, the staff didn’t have any delusions about what a drastic change the company would be making. Retrevo sought new talent from online retailers like Newegg.com and eBay to help its team think in e-commerce terms.

“We were the king of the hill in our old world (CE reviews and recommendations),” Jain says. “E-commerce is full of potholes, and we are going against big guys such as Amazon. Amazon can be very aggressive when it comes to pricing for items that they want to move.”

Instead of competing with Amazon down to pennies, Retrevo’s advantage needs to come from helping customers buy the best products for their needs and get the most out of them. The accessory search engine that launches today, for instance, helps customers find the right accessories based on what devices they have. If the accessory doesn’t work with the device, the company will accept the return with no questions asked.

It would seem that selling and recommending devices on the same site might be a conflict of interest, but Vain insists that it is no more so than when the review site has hosted advertisers like Sony in the past.

“I think we have established over the years that Retrevo is a trusted place and the reviews and recommendations that we give you have not been influenced by any business model or revenue model,” he says.

Because being a reliable source of decision-making information about products is the key to its e-commerce strategy, it seems like much of Retrevo’s success or failure will depend on whether this statement holds true.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Chuck “Caveman” Coker, Dean Terry

Carnahan Camp To Fox News: Why Single Us Out? | TPMMuckraker

Lawyers for former Senate Candidate Robin Carnahan are arguing that the Fox News network is singling the Missouri Democrat out in its lawsuit alleging her campaign violated the network's copyrights.