Ezra Klein did a piece yesterday offering the conventional deficit dove position on deficits and debt. Here’s a commentary on it.

Dad, Uncle Otho, Uncle Kenny, all died before they were 70, Mom and my mother-in-law are both likely to die before that age as well. They all died relatively young for various reasons, but none of them lived to see the retirement age radical Republicans like Minority Leader John Boehner and his economic hit man Rep. Mike Pence want to make the new threshold for Social Security benefits. The specious argument that the tanned man and the ghost of budgets passed make is that if we don’t do something about Social Security spending the program will not be able to pay the (meager) benefits that are promised. It has exactly no basis in fact, like most radical Republican policy ideas it is not designed to address a problem but to advance a political agenda, this time to dismantle a program that has been loved by the public to the long term credit of the Democrats.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

The bland and faux tanned Minority Leader thinks that the issue is that people are living longer and so we have to pay Social Security benefits for a longer period of time, thus making it too expensive. So what is the simple (minded) solution? Raise the age that people can stop working. This way there is less time between our elderly citizens leaving the workforce and dying. That will keep the costs down.