Posner: Details of Ryan Plan Don’t Matter
The significance of the plan lies not in its details, or indeed in any of its proposals, but rather in the willingness of a major politician to challenge entitlements spending. This is only part of the plan but it has great symbolic significance, displays political courage, may open a productive dialogue, and challenges President Obama to propose his own plan for limiting such spending, which he has thus far been too timid (or politically realistic!) to do…
Perhaps some politician will be bold enough to advocate that all entitlements programs, including social security as well as Medicare, be means-tested, as Medicaid is. There is no reason why people who can afford to provide for their retirement should be subsidized by the government, which is to say by the taxpayer.
Full Richard Posner post at the Becker/Posner blog. See Gary Becker’s post here.
I believe Richard Posner is correct. That a representative with a leadership position in Congress would advocate transforming Medicare from a defined benefit into a defined contribution is a pretty big deal!
Good point. The main thing here is that Ryan is forcing Obama’s hand.
The goal of Ryan’s proposal is to permanently lower taxes of the top 2% and corporations (as GHW Bush said – “My constituents, the have and have mores.”) and pay for them through a reduction in health care and retirement benefits for the middle class which they pre-paid for. This proposal actually creates more debt.
A redistribution of wealth created by the middle class transferred to the upper class.
Pure class warfare.
This does nothing to address our real debt issue which is military spending.
Entitlement reform is not a battle between rich and poor; it’s a battle between generations. Jagadeesh Gokhale and Laurence Kotlikoff wrote a policy report on this topic 10 years ago. “Is War Between Generations Inevitable?” http://www.ncpathinktank.org/pdfs/st246.pdf
I hate to point this out but both Prof. Becker and Prof. Posner are not writing about the “Path to Prosperity” that Ryan as Chair of Budget committee released last week, but the “Roadmap” he produced on his own recognizance in January 2010.
Both professors refer to eliminating employer-monopoly health benefits in favor of a universal tax credit, but this is not a feature of the “Path”. It was a reature of the Roadmap.
A good video with a visual representation of Ryan’s plan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwv5EbxXSmE
@John Graham
I just clicked on the Posner link and he references Ryan’s budget proposal and discusses elements in Ryan’s budget proposal — such as block granting Medicaid and turning Medicare into a defined contribution system for those 55 and younger after 2021. The post was dated April 10. Maybe Posnet has written about this before and reused some of the text. Or maybe he’s using some of Ryan’s Road Map to fill in the blanks.
According to the liberals, the entitlement reform proposals in the Ryan budget plan are “too good to not demonize.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXEs6yJ9PSE