Senior Benefits

Being an economics professor, it is likely that Bradley Schiller (“The Deficit Problem Is Far From Over,” Commentary, May 6) has done the arithmetic accurately, but it seems to me that he has misstated the problem we are facing. His arguments about saving Social Security and Medicare miss the point. It’s not the programs that need saving. It’s the people they service. These programs are not ends that exist in a vacuum. They are the means that we have chosen to deal with a very real problem that we would face regardless of whether those programs existed. That is, providing for the needs of our senior citizens. When people like Schiller attack those programs, they have an obligation to tell us how we will meet those needs without those programs.

The young benefit much more from those programs than the old do. If it were not for Social Security and Medicare, many working people with elderly parents would inherit the burden of caring for all of their parents’ living expenses.

SANFORD THIER

Palos Verdes Estates