A Dream Deferred
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008Will Wilkinson has “a dream that President Barack Obama will decide to privatize Social Security, because it’s the sensible and moral thing to do. Democrats will be extremely confused for a couple months, but then will decide that this is in fact the greatest idea ever. Roles will reverse and Republicans will enlist the AARP and Jonathan Chait to kill it in a repeat of 2005, but their hearts aren’t in it, and they lose. Obama’s successful Jason Furman-lead transformation of the Social Security system is incredibly popular with the younger voters who put him into office and and sets him in such a strong centrist position that he completely crushes Romney in 2012.” Needless to say, this dream will become reality about the same time as my dream of inheriting a billion dollars pounds or euros† from a distant relative I never knew existed. And while Will’s dream about Obama privatizing social security is clearly tongue-in-cheek, his confidence that “it’s going to happen sooner or later” seems quite earnest. I don’t get it. Granted, the welfare state is bound to go out of business eventually — the entropy of the universe will catch up with it if nothing else does — but I can’t see any reason for thinking welfare state won’t persist, and indeed, get precipitously larger (hello, socialized medicine) for the foreseeable future.