{"id":14,"date":"2005-02-03T14:03:09","date_gmt":"2005-02-03T18:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2005\/02\/03\/social-security-reform-robbing-paul-"},"modified":"2005-02-03T14:03:09","modified_gmt":"2005-02-03T18:03:09","slug":"social-security-reform-robbing-paul-to-pay-jona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2005\/02\/social-security-reform-robbing-paul-to-pay-jona\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Security reform: robbing Paul to pay Jona"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Bush’s Social Security rhetoric is squarely pitched at my
\ngeneration, prophesying 2042, when I will be 67, as the doomsday
\nyear when Social Security will finally go bust. And his quasi-privitization solution has some
\nappealing features, most of all the likelihood of doing more with less. But the merits<\/span> of the plan, like most of Bush’s economic
\ninitiatives, favor Baby Boomers and leave us, their children, with the bill.\n<\/p>\n

When Bush closes the State of the Union by declaring “Our generation<\/span> has dreams of its own,” he’s not talkin’ ’bout<\/a> the Green Day<\/a>
\nremake. Bush is a  champion of the Boomers. Consider tax cuts. The
\nfact that they are regressive
\ndoesn’t just hurt the poor: it also hurts the young while
\ndisproportionately benefiting 50-somethings who are at the peak of
\ntheir
\nlifetime earning potential. Bush’s endless deficit<\/a> simply shifts the cost of that tax cut windfall to post-Boomers.<\/p>\n

Bush’s Social Security plan smacks of the same favoritism while
\nplaying off the fears and stupidity of the young. Convince Gen-X and -Y
\nthat Social Security won’t be there for
\nthem at all, and they’ll settle for half a loaf. Then borrow their <\/span>money — anywhere from $754 million<\/a> through 2015 to $2 trillion<\/a> — to pay for that half-baked plan. Close the deal by persuading the Boomers that they’re doing their kids a favor.\n<\/p>\n

It’s Boomer-style problem-solving: get the satisfaction of doing
\ngood work without paying anything. It takes a grayer head to cut
\nthrough the economic pandering: “I’ve heard nothing about sacrifice<\/span>.
\nNow I was a child in World War II, but I distinctly remember we had
\nthings like excess profits taxes, we had things like luxury taxes… We
\ntalk about what our soldiers are sacrificing, and we’re not talking
\nabout ourselves.” (Mary Alice Ginzer, interviewed on Morning Edition<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n

Bush’s Social Security plan doesn’t rob Paul to pay Peter: it robs
\nPaul to pay Paul’s father Jona. Maybe our generation is willing to
\nundertake that burden. But sell it like it is: a gift to the parent,
\nnot the child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bush’s Social Security rhetoric is squarely pitched at my generation, prophesying 2042, when I will be 67, as the doomsday year when Social Security will finally go bust. And his quasi-privitization solution has some appealing features, most of all the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}