Every liberal in Washington, or in America, is sure that his or her argument about preserving the current Social Security system is the best one. (Readers of TAPPED, our blog, have read a handful of arguments, and those are just the ones emanating from this office.)
So why should I be any different?
Here's how to save Social Security.
Well, first, here's how not to save it. Many of the arguments I hear -- from smart people -- are built around the idea that the system is not in crisis. This happens to be true. But it also happened to be true that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, and it happened to be true that President Bush's tax cuts disproportionately benefited the super-wealthy. Truth doesn't particularly matter.
What matters is people's self-interest. Liberals don't think enough about people's self-interest. We want people to think about the common interest, because that's what we think about, and so we think everybody ought to think about it, and we can't understand why they don't. (This is why liberals can sound insufferably morally superior.)
It seems, from various polls measuring public views on this and that, that about 15 or 20 percent of Americans actually do think about the common interest. But that's not very many, and it's certainly not enough to save Social Security. The other 80 or 85 percent of people think about their own interest.
And it's absolutely fine that they do. People are not political theorists. People are people. They're busy, they're financially strapped, they're worried about their kids' schools, they're more interested in sports or American Idol. And who can blame them? Sports and American Idol, generally speaking, are more interesting than Social Security actuarial tables.
But liberals tend to look down on self-interest. Conservatives, meanwhile, talk about people's self-interest all day and night: Your taxes are too high, your children are exposed to too much smut, your Jesus is under attack. Of course, conservatives believe in self-interest, so it comes more naturally to them.
OK, conceptual point having been made: Social Security can't be saved by saying there's no crisis. People have no personal investment in a crisis, or in the lack of a crisis. And Social Security can't be saved by carrying on about the destruction of the New Deal legacy. Not enough people care about that one way or the other. What they want to know is, how will this affect me?
Now, quiz time: What is the greatest Republican victory over a Democratic legislative proposal in our era? The answer, obviously, is the defeat of the Clinton administration's health-care plan. Bonus question: How was it defeated? Largely on the strength of those memorable television ads with Harry and Louise, the mythical couple sitting abed (as I recall, or maybe it was at the proverbial kitchen table) and griping about how the proposal would force them to go to some strange (and undoubtedly quasi-communistic) doctor. The ads shifted public opinion -- and they were entirely about people's self-interest.
I say some smart political consultant should just do exactly what the Republicans did. Do up some ads with another, similarly likeable couple. Heck, just call them Harry and Louise. No -- Louis and Harriet, to make a joke. And Louis and Harriet need to be sitting around worrying not about some crisis, not about the legacy of the New Deal, but only about how this will affect them.
Initial ammunition for the script was provided by a New York Times article by Edmund L. Andrews that ran on December 14 under the headline, “Most GOP Plans to Remake Social Security Involve Deep Cuts to Tomorrow's Retirees.” In that piece, Andrews described how the future Social Security shortfall can only be filled, no matter what proponents of privatization do or don't say, by future benefit cuts -- which are at the very heart of the proposed change from pegging benefits to wages to pegging them to inflation (wages typically rise faster than inflation).
According to the article, under current law, a middle-income worker retiring in 2065 would be entitled to a Social Security benefit of 40 percent of his or her wages just before retirement. But under the proposed change, that worker's benefit would decrease to 22 percent of his or her wages -- a 40-percent decrease.
This, to opponents of privatization, should be manna from heaven. And so, to our commercial. Louis and Harriet are a young married couple, around 32 or so. They're sitting in their kitchen. Harriet bounces a newborn on her lap, while a toddler plays on the floor before her. Louis is contentedly reading the paper, as men since Ward Cleaver have been wont to do. It's a modest kitchen -- Kenmore, not Sub-Zero -- but neat and houseproud.
Louis: “Gee, Harriet, it says here that this Social Security privatization is going to have to result in benefit cuts for future retirees.”
Harriet: “Really, Louis? But I though the president said we'd be able to make more.”
Louis: “Well, that isn't what it says here. And some of the fellas at work have said, too” [Personal validation is crucial, because we all know we can't trust the media.] “that privatizing won't really fix what's wrong. There'll still be a shortfall, and that will have to be made up through cuts to future retirees.”
Harriet: “Like what kind of cuts?”
Louis: “Well, it doesn't say here, but Bill down at the office -- and remember, he's in accounting -- says he figures as much as 40 percent down the road. I figured it out. For me, that might mean going from about $40,000 to about $24,000.”
Harriet (pauses as a pensive look crosses her face): “Gosh, Louis. So if that's what's going to happen to people like us, I wonder who's really making out here?” [A subtle class-warfare fillip, playing nicely into everyone's presumption that the Republicans are out to help the rich.]
The dramatic music swells, the narrator says something to drive the point home, the screen goes dark. Fight over.
Self-interest: Get interested in it.
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor.
