Going on the dole

David Brooks summarizes the Social Security issue, which boils down to "will socialism work?"

The question is: Will we leave our children a system as flexible, dynamic and productive as the one that was, fortunately, left to us? Or, by doing nothing, will we succumb to the same ineluctable pressures that now afflict Europe, and find that we are immobilized at the exact moment China and India are passing us by?

My father-in-law is a retired actuary. When I asked him about this, he responded that the problem was easy to fix, just cut benefits by raising the retirement age or tax them more. The dangerous thing about Social Security is that such measures are so difficult for politicians to take, because they are so easy to demagogue.

I think that class warfare will pale in comparison with intergenerational warfare.