The effort to promote generational warfare against Social Security is on one of its periodic upswings. The granddaddy of this campaign was the late Peter G. Peterson. He spent decades and at least a billion dollars of his own fortune trying to persuade younger Americans that Social Security would not be there when they needed it, and that they’d be better off with personal accounts run by Wall Street. (Peterson had headed Lehman Brothers and later co-founded the Blackstone Group.)
The latest entries in this never-ending propaganda campaign are an op-ed piece by former Sen. Phil Gramm and Mike Solon. Their title is a cheeky “Social Security Was Doomed From the Start.” For a doomed program, Social Security has done pretty well over its nearly 90 years, keeping hundreds of millions of elderly Americans out of poverty in old age.
Gramm’s story is that FDR’s mistake was setting up Social Security as pay-as-you-go, in which one generation’s payroll taxes pay for the previous generation’s retirement. He’s right that the program would be even stronger if it banked a large surplus, the income on which could partly pay the cost of Social Security checks. But the right way to fund that is by raising taxes on the rich. How about it, Phil?
Another recent contribution to this crusade is a Dec. 18 piece in Newsweek, headlined “Young Americans Turn Against Boomers Over Social Security.” Newsweek cites a poll that it commissioned. But the actual poll shows nothing of the sort.
I quote: “According to the poll, 56 percent of Gen Zers, 76 percent of millennials and 69 percent of Gen Xers believed the system should be reformed, against 50 percent of boomers.”
But “the system should be reformed” could mean almost anything, from the kind of privatization long advocated by Peterson, Wall Street, and ideological opponents, to the kind of shoring up advocated by the likes of me.
What gives the issue new resonance is that the trust funds will not be able to pay all of the benefits owed within a decade or two. We need to act soon, either by increasing the revenues to Social Security or reducing benefits.
That’s the real debate we should be having. Donald Trump, who is a psychopath but no fool, has avoided weighing in.
What is true is that Americans of my generation got a much better economic deal than generations who came after. We had affordable homeownership, whose increase in equity over a lifetime gave us nest eggs for retirement. Half of us had real pension plans, as opposed to inadequate 401(k)s and the like. We were able to get college degrees without the burden of debt. Those of us without college had good unionized blue-collar jobs that provided a middle-class lifestyle, often on one income.
Younger generations have every right to feel cheated. But contrary to the generational warfare fable, that rip-off was not the fault of boomers. It was the work of conservatives of all ages who denied younger Americans the secure social contract that my generation enjoyed.
And contrary to the attacks on social insurance, Social Security is a relatively small part of that larger story. If we want to keep it strong for future generations, the path is to strengthen its finances, not to weaken its coverage.
Social Security is more essential than ever, given the collapse of decent pension plans engineered by corporations and Wall Street, to transfer all the risk to workers and retirees. The real generational warfare is class warfare.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect (prospect.org) and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. Like him on facebook.com/RobertKuttner and/or follow him at twitter.com/rkuttner.
See the online, linked version.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2024
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us