Ross Douthat waxes lyric about Paul Ryan a Republican Senator from somewhere who actually is making concrete proposals which we are supposed to love, love, love because they combine Republican ideals - that would be lower taxes on rich people and less government spending that doesn't go to defense contractors - with the Democratic commitment to progressive redistribution of income.

Here is how it would work:

A simplified tax code, consisting of a two-bracket income tax with a large standard deduction and a business consumption tax, would pay for a means-tested safety net, and a system of tax credits, risk pools and low-income subsidies would underwrite a free (or, well, somewhat freer) market in health care. In other words, Ryan would balance our books by shifting away from programs that shuffle money around within the middle and upper-middle classes — taking tax dollars with one hand and giving health-insurance deductions, college-tuition credits, home-mortgage deductions, Social Security checks and so forth with the other — and toward programs that tax the majority of Americans to fund means-tested support for the old, the sick, and the poor.

Scrapping progressive tax rates and eliminating the various tax loopholes that favor investors are right out of course so we need to get progressive somewhere. We can do that by making sure that the fats cats in the middle strata pay their share. Meanwhile we can save lots of money by paying income supports and taking care of the medical needs of only the very, very, absolutely poorest of the poor.

The rich stay rich while the inferior orders pay for their own and enjoy a much more equal income distribution at the bottom.

So Wonks Anonymous has two question for Mr Ryan:

Why no just write a bill to abolish Social Security and Medicare? If we means test these programs then we might just as well abolish them because we have two perfectly good means-tested programs that help the old sick and poor. These would be individual welfare - SSI and SDI - and Medicaid.

And if doing this to my generation is a grand idea, why not do it to everyone, even those who now are on these programs?

It's not like the Boomers will have any opportunity to get ready for this.