Review of Fred's Social Security Proposal

Ramesh Ponnuru over at The Corner on National Review (who is no Fred apologist) has posted a defense of Fred's Social Security plan. The basic complaint that Fred's proposal to change how the benefits are indexed is "a departure from the promises that were made to workers when the Social Security system was created." Ramesh counters:

Wage indexing, the status quo policy, started only in 1977. So getting rid of it would not break any promise made when the system was created. And usually it's the Left that insists that Social Security isn't a retirement program but a "social insurance" program, which is to say a safety-net program. If Social Security is a retirement program, then adding a personal-account feature to it, as Thompson would, makes sense. If it's a safety-net program, then Thompson's price indexing makes sense. If it's a little of both, then taking both halves of Thompson's plan makes sense. So I'd say Fred Thompson ends up looking pretty good here.