NYTimes.com – Not Crass, Class

Actually, there’s more crassness in this world than is dreamed of in most professors’ philosophy. But still, Smith is right that this is mostly not an explicitly cynical calculation, more a matter of tout le monde, as Tom Wolfe would say — meaning a narrow circle of People Like Us — doesn’t care about Social Security, so it’s hard to grasp how much it matters to others. Yglesias points us to a chart:

via NYTimes.com – Not Crass, Class. Social Security composes 83.2% of the first income quintille’s income, even up to fourth quintille it’s 43.6%, only at the top quintille is it 17.9%. This possibly more than anything else makes the point of how cutting Social Security benefits is absolutely devastating for anyone but the absolutely top percentile of retirees.