Steve Verdon has responded to my challenge to proponents of Social Security reform actually to build a case for reform with a post that I consider to be reasonable, reasoned, and temperate. I haven’t completely digested his arguments yet but his post is definitely worthy of consideration. He includes a good question for me:
Over at the Glittering Eye, the bar is set to preclude arguments such as the one above [ed. adverse secondary effects of the current system], but why? If a policy has a potentially serious flaw in it…shouldn’t we fix it? We saw pandering similar to that described above with the Prescription Drug Program for Medicare. Do we really want to keep policies in place that continuiously tempt politicians to pander with tax dollars?
I was trying to apply a commonsense standard. When you bring in a repairman to repair your refrigerator you don’t expect him to throw the refrigerator out because it uses too much energy and we should be eating fresh-picked vegetables immediately and meat not at all (even if these things are true). Bringing actuarial soundness to the Social Security system is (in my opinion) a worthy objective and something we should be able to achieve consensus on. Even if the additional critiques of the system are true and similarly worthy they’re a form of changing the subject.
I’m absolutely not opposed to a broader critique of the system but not in the context of a discussion of bringing actuarial soundness to the system. Not only does it change subject but it weakens the potential consensus by making some—like Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall—suspect that the consideration of reform is just a stalking horse for abolition of the program entirely.
When you bring in a repairman to repair your refrigerator you don’t expect him to throw the refrigerator out because it uses too much energy and we should be eating fresh-picked vegetables immediately and meat not at all (even if these things are true).
True, we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater so to speak. However, there is nothing saying we can’t buy a new energy efficient refridgerator. I don’t know of any serious plan to reform Social Security that doesn’t address the problem of providing for retirement income. Some prefer a mandantory savings, others a transfer system like we have now.
Why not? If we can do both why not? Using your refridgerator example, we’d need the fridge for at least a short period while we buy the new one. So we fix the old one, and maybe start saving for the new one.
Not only does it change subject but it weakens the potential consensus by making some—like Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall—suspect that the consideration of reform is just a stalking horse for abolition of the program entirely.
The proper response is to point out the dishonesty of the above arguments. I’d like to see a plan that suggests simply abolishing the program and leaving people to “go it alone”. There is no such plan out there. Attempts to say that this is the ultimate goal rests on the mind reading abilities of Drum and Marshall. Since we can be pretty sure neither of them have telepathic abilities we can also be pretty sure they are making these arguments knowing fully well they are bravo sierra.
I’m absolutely not opposed to a broader critique of the system but not in the context of a discussion of bringing actuarial soundness to the system. Not only does it change subject but it weakens the potential consensus by making some—like Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall—suspect that the consideration of reform is just a stalking horse for abolition of the program entirely.
Any plan to reach solvency necessarily will affect intergenerational fairness, usually for the worse. It seems silly to require the President to support a plan to achieve solvency without also allowing him to address the associated problems that his plan would otherwise exacerbate. Why must we require politicians to “break” something in order to “fix” something else?