An insane Social Security giveaway, Biden tech deal aids CCP, hurts US and other commentary

Libertarian: An Insane Social Security Giveaway

The Senate is set to boost “Social Security payouts to public sector workers who receive pensions and did not pay taxes to support Social Security while working in the public sector,” thunders Reason’s Eric Boehm. The cost of “nearly $200 billion” will “hasten the insolvency of Social Security for all beneficiaries.” Indeed, it’d likely “end up costing the average couple more than $25,000 in lifetime Social Security benefits” as it accelerates “the mandatory across-the-board benefit cuts” needed to deal with insolvency. Congress should implement “a complete overhaul of Social Security” to provide “retirement security for all Americans.” Instead, it’s “set to pass a special handout to a politically connected group while leaving Social Security on even shakier ground.”

Conservative: Biden Tech Deal Aids CCP, Hurts US

“President Joe Biden’s administration just agreed to a five-year extension to the science and technology sharing agreement with China,” grumbles Tom Rogan at the Washington Examiner. That’s a “bad decision,” as China uses its access “to manipulate otherwise civilian technologies for military and other nefarious purposes.” Biden’s move sends the wrong message “to allies such as France, Australia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom,” all “keen to increase their technology engagement with China to win new Chinese investments” but “proceeding cautiously” as “they know the United States is deeply concerned with China gaining access to new military-enabling technology.” This plainly “undermines the incoming Trump administration.”

Mideast beat: Post Assad, Back the Kurds!

“America shares not only common interests but common values” with the Kurdish people, who can “can be counted on to be valorous when times are toughest,” argue Thomas S. Kaplan & Bernard-Henri Lévy at The Wall Street Journal. Now “it’s time for America to show up for them.” That doesn’t mean US boots on the ground in Syria or Iraq: “Given the right assistance, the Kurds already know how to fight,” as they did against ISIS. “Coordinated and energetic support” of the Kurds would help stabilize Syria, keep “more than 10,000 hard-core ISIS operatives under Kurdish detention,” check “Turkish hegemonic pretensions” plus “further impairing the crumpled heap of Tehran’s self-proclaimed ‘axis of resistance,’ which has formed the most divisive barrier to Arab-Israeli peace.”

Foreign desk: Perilous Fallout of Yoon’s Descent

South Korea’s National Assembly “voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol” after over his Dec. 3 martial-law effort; this “is undoubtedly the end of his most important” achievement, “building a security partnership with Japan,” worries Gordon G. Chang at The Hill. Japan and South Korea “have often treated each other as adversaries,” but in August 2023, Yoon met with “President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida” at Camp David and entered into a trilateral partnership, JAROKUS, despite “extreme animosity in Korea toward Japan” over “brutal Japanese rule there through the end of the Second World War.” If Yoon’s removed from office, South Korea’s next likely president is Lee Jae-myung, who “will change South Korea’s direction, reorienting the country away from its only protectors, the U.S. and Japan, and toward its main enemies, particularly North Korea and China.”

Food watch: RFK’s Starvation Agenda

Making Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the Health and Human Services boss risks “significant negative consequences for U.S. farmers and consumers,” warns Alex Smith at Breakthrough Journal. Kennedy could “alter pesticide use, curb biotechnology innovation, and potentially challenge [genetically modified] products already on the market” thanks to his “conspiratorial thinking” and “poor understanding of both agronomy and economics.” Most notably: “Turning back the biotechnology clock on agriculture would lower yields, increase crop prices, and increase global land-use for agriculture.” Beyond the “significant impacts on global hunger,” it “would assuredly raise [US] food prices while also making farms less profitable by increasing labor costs and use of pesticides.” Simply put, “the harsh reality of RFK’s position is a world without enough food.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board