Selective sympathy

I think we should employ means testing in Social Security and Medicare. This idea has very little political traction, of course. As the great-warrior poet Dave Barry once said "If you dare to suggest that maybe we don't need to pay for the prescription drugs of wealthy retirees who own, say, more than three yachts, members of the American Association of Retired People will beat you senseless with handicapped parking placards." Luckily, small-time curmudgeons like myself are not likely to get the attention of the AARP, so I'll keep on saying it.

I was pondering last night about how I would structure means testing for Social Security. Right now, I lean toward looking at lifetime gross income. If you made more than X amount over the course of your life, you are not eligible to collect Social Security. Right now, the way we deal out payments toward Social Security is very odd. Your payments are positively correlated with lifetime income. That is, people who had the highest lifetime income, and were therefore in the best position to be able to save for and fund their own retirement, are the ones who get the most financial support! Even egalitarians should find that a bit off, no? Hence my idea - if you've made $10 million over the course of your life, and still didn't put enough away for retirement, then too bad for you. Your situation is entirely your fault.

Of course, many modern liberals like Karl Smith will reject the very idea of that. Smith argues that people who are lazy and behave impulsively deserve our sympathy just as much as people who are born blind. He does admit a moral hazard problem - people can just "pretend" to be lazy. He's willing to tolerate that, though, to make sure that society doesn't stop supporting those who are genuinely lazy, because "we lack the technology to distinguish them from those faking laziness."

In which Brad Delong is kind enough to illustrate some things I find perplexing about Progressives these days...

Okay, Delong's post is a few weeks old, but give me a break - I'm just getting in to this blogging thing. Also, work and a full time school schedule. Also, shiny objects.

Where was I? Right, Delong. I'll get to him. First, some background.

So a while back, Mario Rizzo explains why he doesn't always tip New York City cab drivers. Brad Delong responds, if you can call it a response. And the issue came up with Delong again. Go ahead and read the posts - they're not too long. I'll wait here.

Back? Okay, good. When Delong says "I will never understand these people," I find myself saying much the same thing about him.

Note that Delong doesn't dispute that the taxi medallion system in New York City has the effect of limiting competition, thereby allowing taxis to charge artificially high prices to people who need a ride. When the cab driver is also the owner of the medallion, he pockets all the extra money. But even when the cab driver is leasing the medallion, Rizzo points out that higher tips to cab drivers results in medallion owners charging higher prices to drivers for the use of the medallion, so even in this case, the medallion owner will pocket the extra money, leaving the amount of money the driver keeps unchanged in the aggregate. All of this is ignored by Delong.