Replacing pay-as-you-go transfer programs for old people with a crypto mandatory savings approach may or may not be your cup of tea, but Mr. Bush deserves credit for offering a coherent solution. The leading lights of liberal economic thought, by contrast, seem stuck on the sterile subject of whether the federal government would honor the obligations of the Social Security "trust fund" (stuffed with IOUs from the government to itself) in the event that Social Security were to remain unchanged.

Let's concede the point and then some. If the trust fund didn't exist on paper, we'd still expect politicians (at least those who know on which side their electoral bread is buttered) to honor their promises to seniors, even at the cost of imposing heavy new tax burdens on younger workers and smothering job creation.

That's why we're having this argument -- because funding those promises would blight the prospects of up-and-coming generations and undermine the economy's dynamism and growth.

Mr. Bush has a principle, and soon, presumably, a plan. Democrats, as near as we can tell, want to follow down a path trod by the social democracies of Europe -- though Democrats don't admit to themselves where they want to go, let alone advertise their plans to voters. Al Gore didn't bother to mention he favored European-style universal health until two years after he lost his White House race. There's a reason for this. Europe is not a model of genteel living and social concern, but an encrusted social compact in which the old pull up the ladder against the young.

In France, youth unemployment is running at 20%, and half of those finishing school last year ended up on the dole. In Italy, 27% of job seekers under 25 are unemployed. In Belgium, it's 22%. It's not just the young who are superfluous, of course, in a system geared most richly to support long-term idleness among the middle-aged. For folks in their peak earning years aged 55 to 64, only 38% hold jobs, versus 54% in the U.S. In Holland, for instance, one million working-age people are sidelined and collecting disability benefits out of a working-age population of just nine million.

Don't kid yourself that this reflects Europeans simply opting to enjoy the freedom of leisure. EU polls routinely show that what locals want above all else is jobs, jobs, jobs.

Nor is this massive structural unemployment buying Europeans a kinder, gentler or more mobile society. Europeans are half as likely as Americans to complete higher education. A German whose parents didn't go to college has only an 8% chance of going to college. In France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands, he's also more likely than an American to be victimized by crime.

We're not about to lapse into a chorus of "greedy geezers." We suspect more Europeans feel trapped by this social bargain than delight in it. Large transfer programs create dependent constituencies and foster elites who cater to them, until escape becomes fiendishly difficult, especially given the high propensity of seniors to vote.

That's the choice we're facing here. Critics complain that, in assessing Social Security and Medicare's long-term deficits, the program's trustees assume a U.S. growth rate about half the historical average. True enough, but the projected growth rate is not-so-oddly similar to that actually experienced by Western Europe in the past two decades, our best example of a high-tax, high-unemployment economy.

Pay special attention to Democratic economists who claim there's no problem because a "trust fund" will tide Social Security over once revenues fall short of outlays in 2018. They know perfectly well that the trust fund is a ledger-book entry, and will do nothing to save politicians from having to raise taxes or cut benefits to meet the promises of the old-age retirement programs.

These opponents are sending a purely political message to oldsters and voters nearing retirement. It's a message that says: "You've got yours and everybody else can go to hell. Just say 'no' to reform." Democrats ought to think again before they stake their party's future on stiffing the young.