All business owners want the same things: low taxes; unrestricted access to markets; reliable infrastructure; a light regulatory touch; and, above all, a large, well-trained, and docile workforce. By and large, over the last forty years, their prayers have been answered, resulting in soaring profits and asset prices and vastly higher levels of inequality.
The pandemic changed things. Millions of older workers decided to retire, thus leaving a hole in the labor force. Businesses continue to struggle to find qualified workers; at times, they have even been compelled to train them at their own expense! This situation is clearly intolerable. What can be done?
If the retirees can’t be enticed back into the labor force with higher wages, they can be starved out with entitlement cuts. Raising the eligibility requirements for Social Security would be a particularly effective gambit. This is why there will always be a constituency for entitlement cuts in the GOP, even when the PBPs don’t represent the majority of Republican voters, many of whom are completely dependent on Social Security and Medicare for their survival.