Even a deficit hawk could figure out that this amounts to a 3 percent cut in workers' pay. However if we continue to see the same upward redistribution of income over the next three decades that we have seen over the last three decades, it will cost workers roughly one-third of their wages in 30 years. In other words workers stand to lose 10 times as much from current trends in inequality as they stand to lose from even very large increases in the Social Security and Medicare taxes.
Those two numbers should make the deficit hawks' agenda clear. It is about getting people to obsess on the cost of their own retirement and to ignore the rich people who are stealing them blind. When we recognize this fact, it is understandable that Fred Hiatt would be upset when lower than projected deficits make these scare tactics more difficult.
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