Lost in the 21st Century

From Americablog.com

Another article that says just what I’m thinking…

With a nice nod to Digby, Paul Krugman makes an essential cultural point about Beltway opposition to Social Security — it’s all about class (my emphasis throughout):

[A] fair number of “centrist” Democrats – probably including the Incredible Shrinking President — seem willing, even eager, to join up with Republicans in cutting Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age. … The question you have to ask is, why are Democrats such suckers on this issue?

And why Social Security particularly, and not Medicare? For Krugman, the reason is revealing:

When medical expenses are big, they’re big; even the very affluent are grateful when Medicare pays the bills for their mother-in-laws bypass or dialysis. The importance of Medicare, in short, is obvious to all but the very rich.

Social Security, by contrast, is something that matters enormously to the bottom half of the income distribution, but no so much to people in the 250K-plus club. A 30 percent cut in benefits would represent disaster for tens of millions of Americans, but a barely noticeable inconvenience for VSPs [Very Serious People] and everyone they know. A rise in the retirement age would be a vast hardship for people who do manual labor, but if anything a gift to VSPs, who don’t want to step aside in any case. And so on down the line.

So going after Social Security is a way to seem tough and serious — but entirely at the expense of people you don’t know.

I’m calling this a cultural analysis because he’s talking about people who pick their targets based on their starting point. For example, some people want skate-boarders banned because they have brittle bones; others want the government to murder Julian Assange because they’re government-hating Teabagging freedom-lovers. It’s a function of your starting point.

The political analysis is equally simple, but it uses power as the dynamic — If you’re in the predator group, you get to eat the prey. It’s just a matter of feeding; no ill will intended.

via AMERICAblog News: Krugman: Why people like ‘the Incredible Shrinking President’ don’t like Social Security.

I hope the President and the Democrats in Washington realize they are playing with fire here…

From Digby at Hullaboo.com…and I couldn’t agree more.

If they pursue this Social Security/Austerity business I think we’ll have a one term presidency (even, Gawd help us, if the Queen of the Arctic gets the nomination.) And I’m not sure that the Democratic Party won’t be permanently shattered.

I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it’s vitally, vitally important that the president understand that if he goes after Social Security, the Republicans will turn the argument on him just as they did with “death panels” and “pulling the plug on Grandma” and end up solidifying the senior vote for the foreseeable future and further alienate the Party from the liberal base. I know it makes no sense that Republicans would be able to cast themselves as the protectors of the elderly, but in case you haven’t been paying attention lately, politics doesn’t operate in a linear, rational fashion at the moment. After all, the Republicans just won an election almost entirely on the basis of saving Medicare.

via Hullabaloo.