Social Security Motives
Megan McArdle says I have too much loyalty to the “system”:
Megan’s making an arguemnt that there are better way to accomplish the goals the appartatus was set up to serve, but there can be no change that does not threaten Zeitlin’s tribe.
Meagn’s arguing means and ends – Zeitlin’s fighting for the survival of his tribal indentity – thus the hysteria.
Sure, I believe that Megan herself probably has the right motives when discussing Social Security (I’m not going to bring education into this debate), but Megan and her gang of well meaning libertarians aren’t really that important in the political debate.
The people who were trying to “destroy Social Security” (by which I mean reducing benefits and radically overhauling the system in response to phony crisis) aren’t so well meaning. When you hear Karl Rove or GroverNorquist talk about Social Security reform, their goals weren’t to give more money to seniors or to reduce the cost of the program, instead they wanted to break the New Deal coalition that is responsible for there being a strong(ish) liberal movement and party in the United States. So while I appreciate folks like Megan and Will Wilkinson saying that their ideas to reform Social Security really will be better for the country, they have no overarching political agenda — of which Social Security reform is a part — that could plausibly be enacted. The GOP, on the other hand, does, and thus the debate should be framed in larger terms than how you build up the program from scratch.
I’m curious, what would you say to modest changes like raising the retirement age to align more closely with life expectancy?
HispanicPundit
November 1, 2007 at 12:09 am
Sure, raising the retirement age to align with increased life expectancy is fine. I just don’t think it’s all that urgent a problem.
Matt Zeitlin
November 1, 2007 at 12:12 am
the problem with entitlements is that if you wait until they are urgent it becomes more politically difficult to enact both because of raw public choice dynamics (as the population ages the AARP gets even more members) and also because of a valid sense of “i paid into the system all my life.”
suppose that we agree that we will need to raise the retirement age starting with a given birth cohort (say, people born in 1955). which would be easier and more fair? to raise their retirement age today and let them plan around it for 13 years, or to wait until we reach some urgency tripwire (eg, net payments out of the social security trust fund) and raising the retirement age for that cohort then, when they are only a couple years from retirement?
gabrielrossman
November 1, 2007 at 9:49 am