 A video recently resurfaced of Beto O'Rourke when he was running for the House of Representatives and him talking about social security and what he would do to reform social security. And to be clear, I'm not sure that he still holds this stance, but what he said back then, running as a Democrat, it's incredibly troubling because essentially the way he describes how we should reform social security is 100% a right-wing approach to social security. The people who paid into social security and who are earning their checks back from their investment in social security, that needs to be protected. That's inviolable. But going forward for future generations, for my kids' generation, five, three and one-year-old right now, we need to look at things like means testing. We need to look at perhaps a longer, a later age at which my kids are going to retire. That's a tough decision. It's not easy to say it's going to be politicized by my opponent, but those are the tough things that you're going to want me to weigh in on when I'm in Washington, D.C. This is precisely why the U.S. almost defaulted on its national debt this summer. And the incumbent voted against the compromise that was reached that prevented us from defaulting on the national debt. So he wants to both means test it and raise the retirement age. Make it so that way you can only qualify for social security later in life. He didn't name a specific number, but nonetheless raise the retirement age means test it. Okay, so why is this problematic? And also why would this only be applicable to people in the future? Why wouldn't you do this for current beneficiaries of social security? Well, a lot of Republicans talk about it this way. Marco Rubio included because they don't want to do anything that would affect current beneficiaries of social security because they know there would be hell to pay and they wouldn't let them do it. There would be fierce public backlash as has always been the case when a Democrat or Republican has tried to reform social security. So what they're trying to do here is they're trying to reform it for future generations because young people who will one day benefit from social security, they currently don't really know how crucial this is going to be when they are older. They don't know how important this is and will presumably put up less of a fight than current beneficiaries. And the problem here is that if you're going to wait to quote, save social security and you're only going to reform it for future generations, you're already undermining this implicit premise that social security is insolvent and needs saving in the first place. And what Beto O'Rourke is feeding into is this manufactured crisis that social security, look guys, we've got to do something, we've got to reform it if we wanted to be here for future generations. But this is nothing but propaganda. It's all a ploy to privatize it. And it's been the ploy of Wall Street now for decades because they have been salivating over social security and they desperately want to be able to dip their hands in the cookie jar. But because it's such a loved program by Americans, they haven't been able to do that. So they've been thinking of ways to covertly undermine the appeal of social security. Means testing is their primary goal. Because what do you do if you means test social security? You transform it, you turn it into a welfare program where it only benefits poor people as opposed to everyone. So it's no longer a universal program. Now that may make sense in theory on paper, but the problem with means testing it is that you undermine public support for it. Because if everyone is no longer a beneficiary of social security, if it's now deemed a welfare program that undercuts public support for it, and then that opens the door to privatization. Because you'll no longer have this overwhelming backlash if you try to touch it and privatize it. But that's their ultimate goal. But really anyone who's on the left, we have an answer to the question as to what you do to social security. It's simple. You lift the cap on taxable income. Because currently, depending on the year, if you make more than 120,000 or 130,000, you just stop paying into social security, which is absurd. Wealthy people shouldn't not benefit from social security, but they definitely should not stop paying into the program that they'll also be benefiting from. So the fact that there's a cap to begin with is absurd. And if you're on the left, it's easy. You just say we lift the cap. This is what Bernie Sanders has been talking about. This is what a lot of even some corporate Democrats have been talking about. But for better or worse, to just overly say we need to means test it and raise the retirement age, this is what Republicans want to do. Individuals like Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and understand that you've got to be savvy and acknowledge that this is nothing more than a ploy to ultimately cut social security in the form of privatization. Because if Wall Street can get in their privatized social security and make a profit off of it, do you honestly think that it's still going to be something that pays out as much as it does now? Do you honestly think that it will still be beneficial to the American people? You can look to some instances of privatization in Latin America where they privatized social security and the prospect of retirement has essentially diminished entirely now because of what they did. And we have to be cognizant of the fact that if you do that in America, we're going to see the same results. So again, I want to emphasize to be fair to Beto here. I don't know if this is still the stance that he would take with regard to social security, but the fact that he was pitching this as a Democrat, it's a non-starter.