Pork for Paris Hilton

David Hogberg says he’s found an easy way to finance part of the $2 trillion of the Soc. Sec. transition costs:

We can start with the Social Security system itself. In his book How Social Security Picks Your Pocket: A Story of Waste, Fraud, and Inequities, Joseph Fried estimates that “$71 billion per year, in the form of spousal and survivor benefits, will be transferred to people with career wages above 70% of the career wage earnings of all other retirees.” … Social Security wastes money by redistributing it upward. Fix it and we have $71 billion to put into personal accounts.

David goes onto suggest we should eliminate corporate welfare, which I think is an excellent suggestion. Maybe David can start lobbying the GOP leadership to reverse its porkish ways. Of course, this $71 billion or even the $2 trillion figure is only a small down payment on our overall Federal financing woes, but if we were really serious about not redistributing income to the rich, we would not be shifting the tax burden away from Paris Hilton onto the working poor.

Update: The testimony of Peter Orszag is a must read (with hat tip to Brad DeLong).