Yet this self-hating senior citizen, who turns 79 this week, is right to question a retirement age that was set at 65 in 1935 and has been raised by only two years (for people born after 1959) since then. Meanwhile, life expectancy at 65 has gone from about 13 more years for men and 15 for women to 17 for men and 20 for women, and those numbers are projected to continue rising.

Simpson is also right to point out that Americans receive Social Security (and Medicare) benefits regardless of how wealthy they are. You might think progressives would welcome means testing. But as Trudy Lieberman explained in the Columbia Journalism Review, they worry that targeting benefits to people who actually need them would undermine "the program's social solidarity."

Translation: Voters love middle-class entitlements, but they hate welfare. That's why progressives were so upset about Simpson's cow comparison, with its implication of unseemly dependence. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., claimed to find the simile "beyond comprehension" but nevertheless concluded that it was both "false" and "demeaning."

Transforming Social Security into a true pension program by letting workers invest part of what they now see disappear in payroll taxes is likewise anathema to the "social solidarity" crowd, since it would let people go their own way instead of forcing them to participate in the government's Ponzi scheme. Simpson is not suggesting anything nearly so radical, which makes the silly, sanctimonious storm over his comments all the more depressing.