Elizabeth Warren and Social Security
Senator Elizabeth Warren says it well:
Transcript is found at Floor Speech by Senator Elizabeth Warren The Retirement Crisis November 18, 2013 As Prepared for Delivery.
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
She may say it well. But it’s what she doesn’t say here that worries me.
If she means lets expand social security and tax the rich to pay for it, she might as well be saying lets destroy social security and turn it into welfare and call THAT social security, and then watch the rich destroy that.
workers can deal with lowered expectations in retirement. they cannot survive become a permanent welfare class.
She was interviewed by Maddow, I think it was the day of her address to the Senate. Maddow did ask how she would address the need to at some later date improve the financial stability of the program and included the suggestion of raising the income cap in that question. Warren did not take the bait offered in that suggestion. She skimmed over several possible approaches, but seemed to emphasize that the “fix” was not an imminent issue and discussion was needed. She did not give the impression that the preferred approach would be to have the program take on a welfare characteristic. Warren made reference to the need to maintain the program as a worker’s retirement system. She still sounds like the most level headed person discussing Social Security in public.
thanks jack.
i think i like the woman. but i have been fooled before.
Maybe Sen. Warren is getting things started and back on the right track. Paul Krugman devoted today’s column to the same subject and didn’t say anything wrong as far as I can tell. He could have gone a little further concerning the need to repay the workers for the contributions that they have been making to the program over the past four decades. He did, however, cover the canard about raising the age because people are living longer. He notes that the wealthy are living longer, but that those most in need of a more secure retirement are losing life expectancy lately.
“So this common argument amounts, in effect, to the notion that we can’t let janitors retire because lawyers are living longer. And lower-income Americans, in case you haven’t noticed, are the people who need Social Security most.”
The entire column:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/opinion/krugman-expanding-social-security.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0
thanks again, jack.
i read it. lets hope the word gets around.