In the blogpost Emanual says,

The rising standard of living among older Americans is largely a result of the tens of thousands of dollars each collects from Social Security and Medicare. And this huge transfer of wealth is harming our children.

Another village idiot posing as economist for the day in a blog playpen.

The standard of living is determined by productivity, not transfers. The overall standard of living doesn't change regardless of how output is distributed after the fact because it's zero sum outcome in the aggregate.

The real value of that collected from SS and Medicare by seniors was produced somewhere by some entity in much higher amounts per economic input today relative to an earlier baseline within seniors lifetime due to rising productivity and overall living standards. Not to mention how much seniors already paid directly into SS and Medicare.

If Emanual wants to bash seniors benefitting from true redistribution at the expense of others like children in poverty the first thing to adjust for is productivity and overall living standards before claiming these are part of transfers in a zero sum game.

Of course Emanual is not claiming that transfers cause productivity that raises living standards which harm children. But that's effectively what he wrote and that's the problem. It's so bad it doesn't rise to the level of accountability because it's incomprehensible.

Maybe someday Emanual will be able to write about Gina Coefficients after attending a rehab math class in addition, subtraction and the leveraged multiplication of income and wealth by the 1%.

You commented "how much effort the Washington gang goes through to nail..." Actually, as you have consistently demonstrated it does not take much effort to bash the ones who DOES NOT HAVE MUCH VOICE in this country.

It takes real effort and in fact put your career on the line by criticizing the 1% in this country. You will risk being called many names by the Smartest Boys in the Room, Fox, chamber of commerce, trade groups, etc.

Who want to suffer through that?

Ezekiel Emanuel is the brother of former Obama attack dog Rahm Emanuel, both sons of former Irgun terrorist Benjamin Emanuel (who gained some notoriety a few years ago for his racist comments about Palestinians). So we have a rough indication that consistency of thought is not going to be a strong point in the Emanuel family.

There are a couple of notable statements in Emanuel's essay that deserve attention . . . and ridicule:

1. Emanuel writes of the "huge transfer of wealth" resulting from Social Security and Medicare — essentially repeating the newest idiocy of Democrats and Republicans about a clash of generations in the US. As Dean Baker points out, it is transparently obvious that the real transfer of wealth in the past 30 year has been from the bottom 50 or 60 percent and the middle to the upper 5 or 1 percent (and even more so to the top 0.1 percent).

2. "Older Americans aren’t selfish. Many would be willing to forgo some of their government benefits, if only they could be sure the money would go to a worthy cause." For someone who claims to be a scientist, this is an extraordinary comment in the absence of any citation to support the claim about the opinions of older Americans.

3. "n the current system, giving up a Social Security check or Medicare benefits seems completely irrational. The money disappears into a bureaucratic black hole." In fact, both Social Security and Medicare are models of bureaucratic efficiency — far more cost-effective than the managerial operations of any US Fortune 500 company or, I would guess, the University of Pennsylvania, where Emanuel is a vice provost and professor (probably making at least $250,000 and in all likelihood far more).

The think that most enraged me, I think, was his reference to the many people drawing "tens of thousands of dollars of Social Security benefits." What a mind-boggling display of separation from reality! No wonder his son is such a [expletive deleted]. Really, who selects these people to publish? Are they good friends of Punch's, or what?

Don't tax you, don't tax me; tax that old guy under the tree.

The generation that will now be collecting Social Security paid extra to cover their own payments. No other generation did that--Social Security was a pay-go system. Now they 1% doesn't want to have to pay that money back. Jamie Dimon can afford to pay more in taxes to enable us to recover the money they owe.

Indeed, PeonInChief. This utterly unnecessary departure from pay-as-you-go, which is the highest reasonable rate of taxation - was a massive destruction & transfer of working people's wealth upwards. Essentially what happened is that a large part of working people's money, the SS tax that "went into" the Killer Teddy Bear Trust Fund, above pay-as-you-go, was used to build useless killtoys in order to enrich the already rich. It had to "be spent on" something - if it hadn't been, then the gross overtaxation, the "sound finance", the SS Trust Fund surplus, would have wrecked the US economy.

A far better use of "this money" would have been to just give it back to those it was take from - i.e. to not raise the SS tax above pay-as-you-go. The "problem" right now is that the SS Trust Fund is finally paying out more than it is taking in. Contrary to 99.9% of economic nonsense propaganda, this is a very good thing. We need big deficits NOW! That is why the deficit terrorist/hawks like Thief Thieferson, Bowles, Emanuel, Simpson etc. hate it so much. Money might go to people who more than deserved it, more than paid for it. Demographic shifts prevent continued welfare-for-rich-parasites, and direct money to real people, who will spend it on the real economy, not military / financial parasitism.

Contrary to many well-meaning progressives, Obama's SS tax cuts were one of the few good things he did. FDR himself knew perfectly well how SS taxes worked & how they DID NOT pay for Social Security. So FDR pondered the same kind of Obama SS tax cuts in a recession himself.

This is the very same elite minded chump who has masterminded the whole of the 'ethics' behind Obamacare is he not? Folks this guy is as dangerous as they come - I fear when I am old his medical ethics mentality would have me die rather than be treated for a serious disease that could be treated. Who the hell made this guy God?

Anyone with a retired parent that files a FIT return should check the return. My guess is that if they have a decent pension that allows them to live with some dignity, then they're probably having their Soc. Sec. income taxed (talk about double pay-as-you go!). The Emanuels and Geithners of the world never do their own shopping, or pump their own gas, or fill out their own tax returns (poor Timmy G even "forgot" that he had to pay taxes for a couple of years). They don't have time to do such mundane things and so haven't a clue how the world actually works (or fails to work). Smells like the "nonmenklatura"of the old SU.

Table A-3. Mean and Median Annual Household Income in 2008 Dollars http://digitalcommons.ilr.corn..._workplace

Study says Median Household income $30,774 for those over 65, and that includes "family contributions" and a lot of other so-called income.

Average household income was $47k, accounting for income inequality in USA.