Chris Farrell demonstrated the incredible contempt with which the elites view the American public in his comments on MarketPlace this morning. He assured us that "everyone" agrees on what a solution to the Social Security solvency problem looks like. At the top of his list was raising the retirement age. All the polls that I have seen show that large majorities of the public (more than 60 percent) strongly oppose raising the retirement age beyond 67 (the age reached in 2022 in current law). This leaves one wondering who is the "everyone" in Mr. Farrell's world. I assume that he is referring to some group of policy types who he talks to. Of course, all the policy people I talk to know that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects Social Security to be fully solvent until 2046 with no changes whatsoever. Even after that date it will always be able to pay much higher benefits than current retirees receive, even if no changes are ever made. Given the distant and relatively modest shortfall projected for the program, everyone I know agrees that it make no sense to waste time changing the system now. This is an especially bad time to address the program's long-term problems because the enemies of Social Security have spread so much ill-founded fear about its future. Maybe one day, the vast majority of the public, who strongly support Social Security, will get to be somebody on MarketPlace Radio.
--Dean Baker