Great Minds Are United?
Apparently I'm not the only one thinking that the United Airlines default has huge implications for Social Security reform. Here's
Norm Ornstein writing on the Huffington Post: "The United default on its pensions has huge implications for Social Security reform."
Ornstein goes on to argue, "Every American with a corporate pension plan will wonder if his or her plan is next on the chopping block. The backup pension plan safety net-- the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation-- will soon teeter under the weight of its assumption of these pension obligations. The whole issue of retirement security will explode-- and Social Security will only be a piece of shrapnel in the explosion."
This has the potential to be an enormous issue in the next presidential campaign. And if George Bush didn't realize it when he picked up the paper this morning—oh, wait, the president doesn't read the paper—Social Security privatization is DOA.
It's too bad, in a way; Bush deserves credit for raising such a politically volatile issue, and a serious discussion of how to fix Social Security would be a good thing.
Maybe there's a silver lining; maybe with privatization off the table—always a goal more related to ideology than sound economics—Washington
can have an honest discussion of how to shore up Social Security.
So sue me, I'm an optimist....
