If you read Dean Baker’s blog, Beat the Press on a regular basis, you know that he regularly beats up on Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson, especially when Samuelson offers up yet more reasons to eviscerate social security. Today Dean relates that Samuelson is upset that Obama has joined the ranks (if only rhetorically) of those arguing for an expansion of Social Security.
Dean relates the following:
Samuelson’s basic story is that the elderly are actually doing quite well; therefore, we should be looking to take money away from them rather than give them more. His main piece of evidence is a subjective question on well-being which shows the over age 65 age group consistently answers that they are most satisfied with their financial situation.
via Beat the Press
Dean goes on to give a number of quite plausible reasons for the fact that the elderly express satisfaction with their own financial situation, but I think he misses, or only glancingly refers to a rather glaring problem with Samuelson’s gripe.
Most people would be proud of the fact that our elderly feel satisfied with their financial situation. It is an historic achievement. A person from another planet, unfamiliar with our ways of thinking, would probably think that the next order of business should be to raise the satisfaction level of the younger generations. After all, isn’t the point to improve people’s lives? Samuelson’s solution to the disparity in satisfaction is not to improve the lot of the young, but to worsen the lot of the old. It is an odd sort of way to solve address the situation, the logic of which could only be apparently to a pundit safely ensconced in the Beltway..
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