A Gut Punch to the Middle

Paul Krugman editorialized in the NYT By now, every journalist should know that you have to carefully check out any scheme coming from the White House. You can't just accept the administration's version of what it's doing. Remember, these are the people who named a big giveaway to logging interests "Healthy Forests."

Is it more healthy for a forest to burn to the ground, or for logging companies to harvest some trees, and then plant new ones so that there will something for them to harvest in the future? Dems like Krugman hate it when business gets any benefit, even if they do something good in return.

Sure enough, a close look at President Bush's proposal for "progressive price indexing" of Social Security puts the lie to claims that it's a plan to increase benefits for the poor and cut them for the wealthy. In fact, it's a plan to slash middle-class benefits; the wealthy would barely feel a thing.

They would get cut even more, possibly to the point where they would not receive ANY social security benefit.

Under current law, low-wage workers receive Social Security benefits equal to 49 percent of their wages before retirement. Under the Bush scheme, that wouldn't change. So benefits for the poor would be maintained, not increased.

That is much better for them than if Social Security ran out of money, and the entire program was cancelled.

The administration and its apologists emphasize the fact that under the Bush plan, workers earning higher wages would face cuts, and they talk as if that makes it a plan that takes from the rich and gives to the poor. But the rich wouldn't feel any pain, because people with high incomes don't depend on Social Security benefits.

And that is good, because under Bush's plan the would not receive any.