A Well-Tailored Safety Net - by Jed Graham (Hardcover)

About the Book

This intriguing book introduces the first Social Security reform proposal tailored to meet the nation's fiscal challenges and care for an aging population.
Tackling one of the most difficult and divisive issues facing America today, A Well-Tailored Safety Net: The Only Fair and Sensible Way to Save Social Security seeks to transform the political debate over Social Security reform by introducing the first proposal tailored to meet both the nation's fiscal challenges and the responsibility of caring for an aging population.

As the first batch of 77 million baby boomers begins to collect its social security benefits in the midst of the explosion of national debt from economic recovery expenditures, Social Security reform becomes increasingly urgent. Jed Graham takes apart each of the current leading proposals and shows how all of them fall short by the key criteria of affordability, effectiveness, and fairness. Graham proposes a bold new approach that would erase more debt than any other proposal, yet avoid benefit cuts in very old age, when people can least afford them. Short on actuary speak and long on common sense, A Well-Tailored Safety Net makes the Social Security debate accessible to general readers. At the same time, it advances innovative solutions with such command of analytic detail and ideological impartiality as to merit serious study by legislators and policymakers.

• More than 50 charts and tables detail the debate over Social Security reform, including the cash benefits retirees would get under various proposals

Book Synopsis

This intriguing book introduces the first Social Security reform proposal tailored to meet the nation's fiscal challenges and care for an aging population.

Tackling one of the most difficult and divisive issues facing America today, A Well-Tailored Safety Net: The Only Fair and Sensible Way to Save Social Security seeks to transform the political debate over Social Security reform by introducing the first proposal tailored to meet both the nation's fiscal challenges and the responsibility of caring for an aging population.

As the first batch of 77 million baby boomers begins to collect its social security benefits in the midst of the explosion of national debt from economic recovery expenditures, Social Security reform becomes increasingly urgent. Jed Graham takes apart each of the current leading proposals and shows how all of them fall short by the key criteria of affordability, effectiveness, and fairness. Graham proposes a bold new approach that would erase more debt than any other proposal, yet avoid benefit cuts in very old age, when people can least afford them. Short on actuary speak and long on common sense, A Well-Tailored Safety Net makes the Social Security debate accessible to general readers. At the same time, it advances innovative solutions with such command of analytic detail and ideological impartiality as to merit serious study by legislators and policymakers.

Review Quotes

"A Well-Tailored Safety Net should be read by every policy wonk or would-be wonk who is focused on the long term fiscal outlook in general and on Social Security in particular. There are two reasons to read it. 1. Author Jed Graham has one original idea that is quite interesting. 2. He offers clear, fair analysis of many of the alternatives for dealing with Social Security." --EconLog

"...I urge you to read Graham's A Well-Tailored Safety Net. I'm convinced that it holds the key to making Social Security sustainable in a politically palatable way." --National Reveiw Online

"A bonafide Social Security fix...Jed Graham...has a pretty smart proposal." --The New Republic

About the Author