Cutting our way to wealth and happiness

The liberal case for cutting Social Security? Matt Miller has decided to follow Andrew Cuomo down the spider hole of regressive budgeting, buying into the notion that the only way to fix our fiscal problems is to cut our way out of it.

Never mind that Social Security, as it’s currently constituted, does not go nearly far enough and that Medicare should be expanded to cover all Americans. I know this is a statement that is out of step with political fashion, but our problem is not that we pay too much in taxes to get overly generous benefits. Our problem is that we have allowed the gap between the rich and the rest of us to grow exponentially.

Taxes in the United States account for 27.3 percent of gross domestic product — far lower than the 36.2 percent average for 30-member Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and lower than all but four of its members.

And yet, we still pay more per capita for healthcare than any other industrialized nation, fail to cover a large section of our citizens and still have one in six workers either unemployed and underemployed.

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• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet