It’s curious that the Republican’s new twist on the Social Security reform ignores both the long run solvency of the system and the long run solvency of the people who rely on it.

Yes, the new idea makes a tiny bit more sense than for the federal government to borrow the life savings of its citizens (that was the last great idea)! Now the idea is to give away the trust fund surplus that future generations will need. Fortunately people are really stupid and it endears them to you to abuse their trust.

Once upon a time if you wanted to be taken seriously you’d try to actually address the problem.

The Democrats are not shedding a lot of light in the darkness either. “No comment” is no help at all. What seems guaranteed is that the projections everyone agees on are not likely to be far off, long term declining savings, long term declining employee benefits and long term declining government benefits.

We need to match that to long term increased life expectancy and long term increasing medical, energy and housing costs. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this does not work, that economic growth simply isn’t doing what it’s supposed to.

Is getting richer all the time making us poorer anyway? It could really be. The last 35 years, my whole work life, have been really rich for some folks, for example. I now own a computer and can be read around the world, which is neat.

I’m now a seasoned professional, quite good at what I do and the highest paid guy in a respected firm. Funny thing is I remember a good starting salary in 1970 was $10,000. Yea I did some other things, and I’m not the owner, but discounting for inflation I still haven’t matched that good starting salary yet! I think that’s weird. [http://www.nber.org/data]

Individual experience, of course, generally does not make a good aggregate measure, but may accuratly characterize trends of a sector. Here the real story doesn’t seem to be about the whole, but the persistently diverging experience of the parts.