Social Security

There Is No Crisis

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But is there room for improvement? Probably. No human system is perfect and there is always room for tinkering. But of course the problem with asking such a question now -- and it is not an unfair question -- is that it opens the door for Republican misrepresentation...uh, lying. It's not unfair, for example, to raise the question whether we should be care one wit about old people who have made their own unwise choices in investments. But it's not cricket to raise the issue by claiming that Social Security is failing. Whether we should care for poor old people or not is a legitimate social/moral question which stands on its own.

But such is the reality of mass politics: legitimate political/philosophical questions — what duty do we owe to others? — get lost when the discussion is founded on George Bush untruths. If conservatives want to raise the question of responsibility frontally, well and good. Each generation has the chance and even obligation to reconsider the proper ordering of society. It's not illegitimate -- though I think it heartless & unwise -- to suggest, as is explcit in the idea of "private accounts," that we have no responsibility to vulnerable populations i.e. old poor people, orphans etc etc. But to raise that discussion by fabricating a problem with Social Security is chickenshit.