Monday, October 29, 2012

Why is Obama not making a bigger deal of Social Security?

Social Security has largely been absent from the campaign, and President Obama even went so far as to say that he and Gov. Romney have very similar positions on how to fix the program. (I actually don’t agree that they do, but the point is that Obama said it.)

The question is why? The conspiratorial mind of Dean Baker has an answer:

“But there is another set of economic considerations affecting the politics of social security. These considerations involve the economics of the political campaigns and the candidates running for office. The story here is a simple one: while social security may enjoy overwhelming support across the political spectrum, it does not poll nearly as well among the wealthy people – who finance political campaigns and own major news outlets. The predominant philosophy among this group is that a dollar in a workers' pocket is a dollar that could be in a rich person's pocket – and these people see social security putting lots of dollars in the pockets of people who are not rich.”

Could this be true? Sure. But given that the rest of Obama’s campaign has consisted largely of bashing the rich for failing to pay their fair share, I personally doubt it.

No comments: