May 31, 2015
As the world awaits the final word on the negotiations between Greece and its creditors, it’s worth a quick flashback to 2010 and the report of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission. (This report is often referred to as a report of the commission. That is not true. The by-laws clearly state that to issue a report it was necessary to have the support of 12 of the 16 commission members. While no formal vote was ever taken, the co-chairs’ report only had the support of 10 members.)
Anyhow, getting back to matters at hand, one of the Simpson-Bowles proposals was to raise the normal retirement age for Social Security to 69 from its current level of 66 (soon to be 67). The report recognized that many people work in physically demanding and/or dangerous jobs where it would be unreasonable to expect people to work this late in life. It therefore proposed having special lower retirement ages for certain occupations.
The reason this is relevant to Greece is that one of the sticking points at the moment is the reform of Greece’s public pension system. One of the main issues is that the current system allows people in many occupations to start collecting benefits well before the normal retirement age. For example, hairdressers are apparently among this group because they are exposed to dangerous chemicals on the job.
While the Greek system was a universal target of ridicule among serious minded people everywhere, many of these same people embraced the Simpson-Bowles report as a gem of thoughtful, non-partisan, policy-making. The ability to ignore the fact that the supposedly thoughtful Bowles-Simpson gang were advocating the adoption of a pension system subject to universal ridicule is yet another example of the lack of seriousness of the serious people.
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