Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Social Security

I try to stay out of debates that have devolved into the red and blue halves of the Demopublican party screaming soundbites at each other. The party hopes that the American people won’t notice that they’re the same if they yell and scream a lot, and I try not to play their game.

C. Eugene Steuerle also declines to play their game, but he does it by actually sitting down and analyzing the social security issue, in depth. Scrivener describes him:

Steuerle is an economist who served in the Treasury for both Republican and Democratic administrations, and played a significant role in putting together the Tax Reform of 1986, which bi-partisanly lowered tax rates and broadened the tax base — the best tax law this country has seen in generations, and one that Congress has been hacking away at ever since.

As Scrivener says, his testimony before the House Ways and Means committee is hard to excerpt effectively. Read it. Then ask yourself, why is this sort of thing rare?