It's Matthew Yglesias.
I wrote a diary called Retire at 55: Lower Social Security Eligiblity to 55; Raise Benefits by 15% a few months ago.
Among my points were that the stimulus effect of raising benefits would be good for the economy, creating jobs. And by letting older workers leave the work force, we'd let new, younger workers in, lowering unemployment.
Everybody wins, right!
Now Mr. Yglesias is singing a similar tune. However, he's focusing on the breakdown of the proverbial 3-legged stool for funding retirement: An employer pension, a 401(k) and Social Security. With the collapse of employer pensions and individual 401(k)s, he says that there is an answer:
It's called Social Security. And as the defined benefit pension paradigm fades away, the natural and proper thing would be to rely more on Social Security as a vehicle for ensuring adequate living standards for senior citizens. The fact that this is happening more or less simultaneously with a demographic transition in which the elderly will be a larger share of the population is interesting, but doesn't fundamentally defeat the analysis.
The title of his article is "We Should Probably Be Increasing Social Security Benefits, Not Cutting Them."