A review of Michael Bloomberg’s many statements on Social Security over the last 10 years makes two things clear. First, Bloomberg deeply and sincerely believes that the well-being of the United States requires cuts to Social Security benefits. Second, Bloomberg has no idea how Social Security works. Instead, his head is filled with a hodgepodge of right-wing talking points about the program. On Sunday, Bloomberg’s presidential campaign released his official proposal for Social Security and retirement more generally. It’s written to give the impression that if elected, Bloomberg would not cut Social Security for anyone, and in fact, would expand benefits for everyone. However, the plan leaves the door open to benefit cuts for some beneficiaries — just as Bloomberg has advocated for years.

The former New York City mayor’s plan does include some ideas that, from the perspective of America’s middle and working class, are a big improvement. He calls for upping Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustments, because there appears to be a higher rate of inflation for the goods and services needed by the elderly than by the younger population. He also advocates an increase in benefits for the poorest beneficiaries. Interestingly, Bloomberg also proposes that the U.S. create a new “public-option retirement savings plan, with automatic employer and employee contributions.” This would essentially be a government-run 401(k) plan for all workers who don’t have access to one through their jobs — including a matching government contribution akin to those provided by many employers. While this may sound something like President George W. Bush’s 2005 proposal for privatizing Social Security, it’s significantly superior. Under Bloomberg’s plan, the accounts would be run by the government, allowing for super-low fees that would be collected by Washington. Bush wanted the accounts to be run by Wall Street, which would have generated a gusher of high fees flowing to downtown Manhattan. (At the time, a financial blogger wrote that a former co-worker at a huge investment bank told him, “I want that dumb public money coming across my desk.”) But the rest of Bloomberg’s plan must be read skeptically. The campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg explicitly rule out any cuts to Social Security benefits. By contrast, Bloomberg’s proposal does not. Bloomberg’s campaign did not respond when asked whether he is taking all benefit cuts off the table. Instead, Bloomberg uses language similar to a 2010 proposal from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the chairs of a deficit reduction commission set up by President Barack Obama. Bloomberg vociferously supported the commission at the time. According to Bloomberg’s proposal, “Mike will strengthen entitlement programs.” Simpson and Bowles said their mixture of minor benefit increases and significant cuts would “strengthen Social Security.” Today, Bloomberg wants to “put the system on sound financial footing.” In 2010, Simpson and Bowles proclaimed that their goal was to “ensure Social Security’s soundness.” Like Bloomberg today, Simpson and Bowles proposed increasing Social Security benefits for the poorest beneficiaries. Unlike Bloomberg, they explicitly advocated cuts that would have reduced the benefits of those further up the income ladder. This would have reduced overall costs and made the program more like traditional welfare — an outcome that would have weakened political support for Social Security and made it vulnerable to further cuts in the future. The lack of a straightforward disavowal of cuts from the Bloomberg campaign, combined with Bloomberg’s history, suggests that his plan shares significant genetics with Simpson-Bowles. Unsettling Comparisons Social Security is one of the simplest and most efficient programs ever created by the U.S. government. Essentially, it deducts money from the paychecks of today’s workers and sends it to retirees (plus some widows, orphans, and people with disabilities), providing them with a modest but completely secure income. The current contribution rate is 12.4 percent of everyone’s salary up to $137,700. After decades of propaganda by the corporate right, Americans have become convinced that Social Security faces a terrifying day of reckoning. It does not. It does need some minor adjustments, but that’s something that’s happened many times before and is unremarkable in the context of a program that is 85 years past its initial enactment. The central issue is straightforward. The Social Security Administration projects that, mostly thanks to the retirement of the baby boomers, the cost of the program will increase from 4.9 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product in 2019 to about 5.9 percent by 2039. Then it will stay there indefinitely. In other words, if we can figure out some way to send one additional dollar out of every hundred in the American economy to retirees, there’s no need to cut benefits. This is where Bloomberg comes in. Like many at the top of the U.S. pyramid, Bloomberg is transfixed by the idea that the U.S. and its citizens are wildly profligate and that unless we sober up, the country will someday be punished for our wantonness.

Photo: Beth A. Keiser/AP

After the extraordinary success of his Wall Street terminal business made him a billionaire, Bloomberg was elected mayor of New York in 2001 at age 59. This immediately gave him a place on the national political stage. Bloomberg, then a registered Republican, spoke at the 2004 GOP convention in New York and endorsed Bush. To his credit, Bloomberg disavowed Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security the next year. But Bloomberg was still in office during Obama’s first term as the U.S. tried to recover from the near depression caused by the housing bubble. The deficit spending necessary to prevent complete economic collapse filled billionaires and CEOs with anxiety, and they became obsessed with shrinking it as soon as possible. At the end of 2010, the Simpson-Bowles plan failed to secure enough votes from their own commission to fast-track it through Congress. By February 2011, Bloomberg was explaining to Time magazine that Social Security was essentially fraudulent. “Everybody just thought, Where did [Bernie] Madoff get the idea?” Bloomberg said. “A cynic would say Social Security, [though] I would never say that. But it’s exactly the same thing, isn’t it?” This is an unsettling thing to hear from a billionaire would-be president. The idea that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme has obsessed the U.S. right since the program was founded in 1935. They believe that the fact that Social Security requires a continuing new supply of “investors” (i.e., workers) who just hand their money to previous investors (i.e., retirees) makes it inherently Ponzi-like.

If you want to stop working in 30 years but still continue eating food, you don’t buy $1,000 worth of dried figs and store them in a cave to await your hungry arrival in 2050.