In reflecting on Jeb Bush’s proposal to eliminate the employee-side FICA contributions for workers age 67 or greater, it occurred to me that one of the presumably unintended consequences of such a change would be to aggravate Social Security’s present tendency to redistribute from young to old (by reducing the contributions from the elderly) and from black (or brown) to white. Tinkering with Social Security is dangerous, rather like trying to defuse a bomb. Despite its many defects it has broad support. Exposing those defects to the light probably won’t make you popular.
