What Bill Maher got wrong about spending on young vs old: Everything.

What Bill Maher got wrong about spending on young vs old: Everything.

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Bill Maher, pay attention.

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The reason that public spending on children is lower than it should be isn't because seniors suck up all that cash, but because the wealthy suck it up. They receive most of the interest payments on U.S. treasury debt. While their share of all income in the U.S. has been rising inexorably, their income tax burden has been coming down almost steadily since the 1960, especially in relation to that of the middle class. As Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez have documented, the overall progressivity of the U.S. tax system has plummeted over the last four decades.

In other words, despite what Maher said, it really is about "rich versus poor." And the rich are winning.
The old versus young idea is pushed most vigorously by front groups for the wealthy, many of them backed by the hedge fund billionaire Peter G. Peterson, whose quest is to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare, as we described here. Their tactics include driving a wedge between old and young, and nothing's more effective for that than implying that grandma and grandpa are picking their grandkids' pockets.

Maher has made a career about being not just funny, but brainy and funny. This time around the problem isn't that he took a cheap shot for cheap laughs -- even cheap laughs are funny -- but that his cheap shot was brainless.


MORE:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-bill-maher-20140210,0,1569408.story#ixzz2syUu0EHi