SOCIAL SECURITY DRECK….I don’t really have the heart to wade back into the Social Security debate at the moment ? click here for the short version of how I feel about the whole thing ? but this paragraph from Sebastian Mallaby today really can’t go without rebuttal:
During the 2005 debate, President Bush endorsed an idea that would inflict no cuts whatsoever on low-income workers and would allow the value of middle-class retirees’ benefits to rise, albeit less quickly than now scheduled. Because this formula (devised by a Democrat named Robert Pozen) spreads the burden fairly, Democrats who worry about rising inequality should be open to it.
Just in case anyone is interested, I don’t think there’s a Democrat on the planet who worries about income inequality among the ranks of Social Security retirees. And Mallaby’s “less quickly than now scheduled” is just a cute way of saying that under the Pozen plan middle class retirees of the future would receive a smaller percentage of their average earnings than they do now. I don’t think I’d have to take off my shoes to count the number of progressives who think that’s a good idea.
