Saturday, January 24, 2009

Pew poll: Social Security among top priorities for Americans

A new poll from the Pew Research Center finds that Americans name Social Security as one of the top five policy issues the new Obama administration should focus on. Sixty-three percent of those polled said the administration should make Social Security a "top priority," placing it fourth among 20 issues after the economy, jobs and terrorism. Other, often more touted issues, such as immigration, tax cuts and global warming, ranked far lower.

Click here for more details on the poll.

1 comment:

Bruce Webb said...

Other than being evidence of the effectiveness of such vehicles as the movie I.O.U.S.A I don't see much in the way of policy implication here.

In the comment threads on my SS posts at AB I often encounter the argument "Nobody my age believes that Social Security will even be there for us" as a positive argument for action. While instead it is just a measure of the effectiveness of the plan laid out by Butler and Germanis in 1983 (Fall issue of Cato J.)

The question will be whether people will be of the same opinion once they see the actual numbers attached to actual plans. Some of my colleagues at the left leaning econoblogs would prefer that the Obama team not even take the subject up. Me, I don't think we have anything to worry about, if that is the discussion starts and stops with real numbers in real context. I guess we will see.