New figures show the Social Security trust fund could "be exhausted" by 2032, reports Andrew G. Biggs at National Review. trekandphoto - stock.adobe.com

Economist: How Not To Save Social Security

New figures show the Social Security trust fund could “be exhausted” by 2032, reports Andrew G. Biggs at National Review, but 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 problem worse.

It would “create massive incentives to shift compensation to non-taxable” income, “reduce economic growth and, with it, [tax] revenues” and prompt employers to slash wages, cutting revenue further. Plus, it would increase benefits, defeating the supposed purpose.

“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 replace “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 at the Washington Examiner, after finding that “a relatively small clique of anonymous administrators” can ban users who counter the site’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,” running 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 cash coming from “the state of Qatar, the Gates Foundation, and Libya’s sovereign wealth fund.”

Linguist: People, Not Guns, Kill People

The term “gun violence” has grown “so common it’s easy to miss how strained it is,” removing the “the actual person doing the violence” to absurdly suggest 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,” because “even as crime has gone down” it remains “tragically ordinary for young black men to be shot in poor black neighborhoods.”

The idea seems to be to “create a new term for something” to “get people to think about it differently,” when we really 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” and then “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,” but when “guards ushered me into a van last Friday . . . I was free.”

Yet 28 other Zion leaders and “eight of my fellow church members” remain imprisoned; “I won’t rest until they see freedom.” China’s leaders have “no reason to fear” those who “want to worship God peacefully according to the Bible.” “I hope all our church members are freed,” though it may seem “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 budget 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 must step up “to make that vision a reality.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board