[I]t has been remarkable to me during the last few years of sustained high unemployment and families under stress, how much our national political discussion has focused on the merits of different tax levels for those with high incomes, and how little our national political discussion has focused in any concrete way on how to assist the poor, and in particular on how to alter the trajectory of life for children living in poverty.
Timothy Taylor, “What Poverty Means: Beyond the Antiseptic Numbers“, Conversable Economist, 17 September 2012.
Even more remarkable to me is how the public pension debate in the United States totally ignores the need to reform and increase the size of first pillar, asset- and income-tested pensions known as “Supplemental Security Income”. Many second pillar pensions (“Social Security”) are tiny, yet take-up of SSI is low, probably because of stigma attached to “welfare”, even for the elderly.
