Dan,
While Gautam and I agree on many things, our opinions diverge on the
subject of Social Security. I simply do not believe that Social Security
saved capitalism.
Furthermore, you wrote that: "the purpose of SS was to provide a floor to
keep the elderly and disabled out of poverty. For the most part, it has
done this splendidly." While there is no doubt that Social Security has
largely eliminated elderly poverty, it manage to do so through a scheme of
highly regressive taxation. I have a hard time calling this "splendid."
It also managed to do so by saddling the country with an unsustainable
pyramid scheme, designed and operated by the central government. While
ostensibly it has created a trust fund, the current federal government is
essentially reliant upon the borrowing that trust fund is financing - which
could pose some problems once that sort of borrowing goes away. Moreover,
by providing its benefits to everyone, Social Security has managed to
depress national saving, which according to most economic models has
depressed long-term growth in this country.
I don't know what you mean when you say that if Social Security were simply
a true welfare program, instead of continuing to use regressive taxes to
finance payment checks to the rich, that it could be either "gamed or cut."
Are you saying that Social Security cannot be "gamed or cut" now?
I definitely support changing the indexing of SS benefits to inflation
rather than wages. (Which in the long run, is essentially what you
propose - you just want to increase the benefits for the lower tier first.)
What I can't understand, however - is why do we want tax dollars going to
write checks for people who made $160,000 per year? If a Republican
proposed sending checks to these people you would be lambasting them to no
end. Put the name "Social Security" on it, and payments to rich people
suddenly become sacrosanct. Furthermore, in the long run, under your
2045 "fixed" column, doesn't everyone end up with the same sized benefit -
rich and poor alike??? Is this desirable???
JDG
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"We have one country, one Constitution, and one future that binds us."
-George W. Bush, 11/3/2004
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