Bush playing Robin Hood?

The NY Times has an excellent article providing details of Bush's newly proposed plan to retain Social Security benefits for low-income workers while cutting benefits for the middle and upper class.

Under Mr. Bush's approach of "progressive indexation," a typical low-income worker who earns about $16,000 a year today would be entitled to retirement
benefits equal to about 49 percent of his or her wages, the same amount that is promised today. But those earning an average income, about $36,500 in today's
dollars, would see big changes. Instead of replacing 36 percent of that person's working pay, as promised under today's system, benefits would cover only 26 percent of pay by 2075. And people who earn $90,000 a year in today's dollars
would continue to pay as much as ever in taxes but would receive benefits equal to only 12 percent of their pay.

More on this later, hopefully. I've got to work on my J202 web site all week and start studying for finals. It's going to be a week. If I have time at some point, I'll write about Feingold's latest blog post.

Update: Paul Krugman of the NY Times criticizes the Bush plan and explains why it hurts the middle class and sets up benefits for the poor to be cut in the future. LINK

Krugman makes a good point that this plan would hurt the middle class, but he makes it seem as though a better program would actually hurt the rich in order to help the poor. Just because the rich wouldn't notice their Social Security benefits being cut doesn't mean that it's not a worthwhile part of the plan... in fact, that's exactly why it would be effective: cut benefits for the rich and they don't even notice. Sounds pretty good to me.

Update: Two Washington Post Op/Ed pieces about the new Social Security Proposal

President's Plan Shields Benefits of Low Earners

The Challenge to Democrats