MORE KRUGMAN ON SOCIAL SECURITY
"Why expose workers to that much risk? Ideology."

From the New York Times via the Houston Chronicle:

Jason Furman of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the guaranteed benefits left to an average worker born in 1990, after the clawback and the additional cuts, would be only 8 percent of that worker's prior earnings, compared with 35 percent today. This means that under Bush's plan, workers with private accounts that fared poorly would find themselves destitute.

Why expose workers to that much risk? Ideology.

"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," declares Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

By the welfare state, Moore means Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — social insurance programs whose purpose, above all, is to protect Americans against the extreme economic insecurity that prevailed before the New Deal. The hard right has never forgiven FDR (and later LBJ) for his efforts to reduce that insecurity, and now that the right is running Washington, it's trying to turn the clock back to 1932.

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