As a condition of providing extra funds to support the existing benefit, legislators should let younger workers opt for a better-focused safety net.
In his 2024 budget proposal, President Biden promised to oppose any cuts to Social Security — pledging to defend the current structure of the program. The past four decades have seen enormous changes to America’s economy, society, and public policy, but Social Security has remained essentially unaltered.
That is not because the program is performing particularly well. It costs twice as much as public-pension systems in Australia and Canada but leaves the poverty rate among American seniors significantly higher. Most of the program’s expenditure goes to relatively affluent seniors and has little effect other than to push up taxes, reduce incentives to work, and crowd out private savings for retirement.
Continue reading the entire piece here at National Review Online (paywall)
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Chris Pope is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here. Based on a recent report
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