Macron vs. Warren On Social Security

Warren is proposing to increase Social Security benefits and fiddle with the program’s architecture in her fevered quest to make income redistribution the end goal of all federal activity.

Fans of representative government should be rooting for Macron to succeed with his pension reform, and for Warren to fail.

Warren would pay for her planned benefit expansions with a 14.8% payroll tax on all wages in excess of $250,000 per year, and with a new 14.8% tax on investment income for single filers with incomes exceeding $250,000 per year and married households with incomes over $400,000 annually.

If enacted, these taxes would transform Social Security from an earned retirement benefit into something closer to a social welfare program.  Higher income workers would earn no additional benefits for the added taxes they are required to pay.

President Franklin Roosevelt opposed operating Social Security as a welfare benefit because he believed doing so would weaken political support for the program.  Warren claims to be a defender of Social Security but she is undermining one of its core principles.