Entitlement Reform?
J.P. Freire, responding to my post on limited government, wonders why conservatives aren’t spending more time talking up entitlement reform:
In other words, conservatives haven’t done a very good job of explaining how they want to deal with entitlements. Rep. Paul Ryan is one of the few people talking about this — my only question is why aren’t there more? Even within the conservative caucus?
I think the answer to this is pretty simple. For one thing, a lot of politicians don’t really know how to talk about entitlement reform. They can talk broadly about making changes, but the details are tougher in large part because conservatives haven’t put much effort into effectively branding reform. Entitlement programs are complicated beasts, and it’s not an easy thing to talk about them in a way that’s efficient and accessible. Rather than get bogged down in the details, lots of politicians just avoid the subject, or speak in platitudes.
The other problem, I think, is one that a lot of conservatives don’t like to admit, and that’s that, in the current political environment, entitlement reform just isn’t all that popular. There’s some support in the abstract, but the reality is that much of the voting public genuinely likes not just entitlements but the the idea of a state that provides entitlements. What the right needs on this front is smart messaging that makes the underlying ideas accessible, but that’s going to require some experimenting. And right now, experimenting with various messaging approaches isn’t exactly an enticing prospect for conservative legislators because those attempts inevitably get them tarred as stingy Beltway insiders who want to take away your Medicare and Social Security.
So what, exactly, are they to say if they can’t say they will take at least part of their entitlement? As I understand the options on the table are, if one is to accept the premise that entitlements are unsustainable, is either tax increases or cuts. Which is it and how do you politically make the case?
— dmh · Aug 5, 12:17 AM · #
The very term “entitlement” reveals a bias. To have a “sense of entitlement” is a bad thing. It means you are spoiled. But the vast majority of those who recieve entitlements paid into the system all their lives with their taxes. I agree that as currently constituted medicaid is unsustainable, but that is at least partially due to our health care system and the yearly 15% (or whatever) increases in cost. Social security is easily fixable. But my point is there is nothing wrong with a nation’s citizens deciding to tax themselves in exchange for bottom line services like health care and retirement, for a safety net against the uncertainties of life. And you can’t say that these programs themselves are mismanaged, they are both very efficient from everything I have read. THere could be a case that the funds have been mismanged…. But the soundness of the concept is the main reason that people support these programs.
— cw · Aug 5, 01:47 AM · #
My understanding is that social security is fundamentally unsound, because it taxes one generation to pay the benefits for the one before it. This becomes unsustainable when there are more older folks than younger, as we will see when the baby boomers retire.
I think the reason entitlement programs are popular is because they promise something that sounds good, independent of whether that promise can be delivered. People believe in that promise because they believe the government cannot back out of it, which nonetheless they often do. I was talking to my mother about our Austrian relatives, and how the government there is unable to pay for all the entitlements they were promised a generation ago. Obviously those entitlement programs received a lot of support as well.
— Blar · Aug 6, 02:48 PM · #