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Assumptions, Assumptions
When Bushies talk about the budget they say: "Mr. Mankiw said the official estimates assumed that productivity would continue to grow rapidly." But if productivity continues to grow rapidly, even the pseudo-crisis in Social Security won't materialize -- the program will be very healthy and successful indeed. The President's scare campaign is based on a set of pessimistic assumptions about the potential of the American economy that even he doesn't use when talking about anything else.
December 18, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
now if we could just get someone in the MSM to say those words...
Posted by: cleek | Dec 18, 2004 11:42:41 AM
But Matt...you're missing one of the major tenets of Bush's victory. Bush is the master of the 5-second, super-effective soundbite. He knows that most Americans will NEVER take the time to understand (or even care about) anyone's underlying assumptions. He has successfully sold other dishonest programs through emotions, not logic. Through first fear, and then his "heroic" strength and protection to rescue them from their fears. He plans to sell this program just as he sold the Iraq War, fear of terrorists and mushroom clouds over large cities, and his 2004 campaign.....by inducing panic and fear, and then offering his ideas as the way...God's way... out of the supposed fearful, unacceptable state.
He truly understands the use of emotion his ideas, and the uselessness of using intellectual appeals to a public with a short attention span. The "truth and logic" approach lost the election for Kerry/Edwards. Unbelievably enough, it could also lose this social security debate with the American public.
Posted by: Deborah White | Dec 18, 2004 12:10:43 PM
The Social Security "debate" is lost the moment we, and especially, the press accept the rhetoric about there being a crisis in Social Security. The point we have to keep pounding on is that there is no crisis, nor is there any reason to expect one for another 40 years. A secondary point is that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were paid for with excess FICA taxes, as was Clinton's budget surplus. Those excess taxes are still there in the form of treasury bonds to finance Social Security until the 2040's or longer. Of course repayment of those bonds will require a repeal of the tax cuts for the wealthy, but what's wrong with that?
Posted by: Vaughn Hopkins | Dec 18, 2004 1:02:00 PM
This is just wishful silliness. Based on centrist projections, we're going to have an $8 trillion social security deficit by 2035 and a $61 trillion medicare deficit. I haven't once heard a Democrat come out with a solution to this crisis beyond: (a) denying there is a crisis (Yglesias' style); (b) not talking about the crisis (Kerry's style); or (c) actually suggesting constructive ideas to avert the crisis (Lieberman, Kerrey.)
Now maybe Yglesias is from a rich enough family that he wont' need social security (I wouldn't really know, but I'm inferring from his elitist, rich private school background that this is the case), but some of us don't want to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars over our working lifetimes to rich old people only to get nothing back when we retire. The most likely scenario under Yglesias' "Do Nothing Plan" is that our generation will work our whole lives, and then means-tested out of any benefits when we retire - and also that medicare won't be there because the brilliant new medical advances of the future will cost too much. Perhaps one day though there will be a method of radical plastic surgery that corrects that hidious face to the left of these comments.
I completely fail to see how Yglesias thinks we can maintain the status quo social security system when there will only be 2.7 workers per retiree in 2035, down from 4.8 now. Yglesias is party to highly irresponsible, short-term thinking. He is a partisan hack.
Posted by: dell | Dec 18, 2004 1:17:24 PM
shorter dell:
please, stop with the facts. My faith based numbers tell me all I need to know.
Posted by: Atrios | Dec 18, 2004 1:35:12 PM
oh, it's dellis again. I thought he disappeared long ago. Alas.
Posted by: praktike | Dec 18, 2004 1:48:18 PM
I haven't once heard a Democrat come out with a solution to this crisis beyond: (a) denying there is a crisis (Yglesias' style); (b) not talking about the crisis (Kerry's style); or (c) actually suggesting constructive ideas to avert the crisis (Lieberman, Kerrey.)
Uh, Dell, (c) would actually constitute two Democrats coming out with a solution to the "crisis".
Others have suggested eliminating Cheney's tax cuts for the rich. But of course you won't support that, because you're a zombie-Republican. Remember that when you retire with your empty private account.
Posted by: ScrewyRabbit | Dec 18, 2004 1:59:20 PM
In case you were wondering where "dellis" gets his talking points.
Seems like he's a moron when it comes to football too. I mean, yikes.
Posted by: JP | Dec 18, 2004 2:02:32 PM
Dell,
"2.7 workers per retiree in 2035" is a problem for the economy no matter where income during a non-working retirement comes from. I keep waiting for people to propose the obvious solutions of the Swiftian variety; why don't we just make that ratio something the government tries to control, like inflation? For instance, your Social Security payments could be a baseline plus a bonus for every child. Or we could limit the duration of retirement, ala Logan's Run. Or continuously adjust the retirement age to make the ratio constant. Or ...
Posted by: Bill Arnold | Dec 18, 2004 2:15:43 PM
>make that ratio something the government
> tries to control
That would be easy to do for the USA:
we could just allow more immigration of
younger workers. In the decade of the
1990s, we gained about 15M people through
immigration (legal and illegal), or
roughly 1.5M/year.
The current workforce is about 140M,
if we're worrying about what might
happen 30 years from now then doubling
the rate of immigration could give an extra 45M workers. And there's no
shortage of people wanting to come
to the US.
Of course that doesn't help if the
economy isn't creating jobs; if the
economy stays bad, we're all screwed
anyway, but if the economy grows at
a decent pace, we could find as many
workers as we need.
Posted by: Richard Cownie | Dec 18, 2004 2:48:25 PM
If we don't do something drastic right now, Social Security will cost us $100 trillion in years to come, especially with a 10% per year inflation rate, and everyone living to age 100. So, lets just kill it. But, if we eliminate the income cap on FICA it may cause an AIDS crisis in Alaska. See how easy this is?
Posted by: Vaughn Hopkins | Dec 18, 2004 3:09:15 PM
Matt - that is an incredibly important point. The free lunch supply-siders love to pretend productivity growth will solve the MASSIVE and current General Fund deficit but then flip and argue the future and small Social Security shortfall is awful because productivity growth will be low. What a fraud. And BTW - this makes up for the assertion that the housing price to rental rate is somehow not linked to interest rates. I hope Brad DeLong takes note of this very wise post! Are you sure you did not take economics? Well done!
Posted by: pgl | Dec 18, 2004 3:22:57 PM
Atrios says: please, stop with the facts. My faith based numbers tell me all I need to know.
Pratktike chimes in: oh, it's dellis again. I thought he disappeared long ago. Alas.
JP: In case you were wondering where "dellis" gets his talking points. [...] Seems like he's a moron when it comes to football too. I mean, yikes.
The guy raised some valid points. What gives?
No wait, I think I understand your plan. You're going to make snarky comments and ad hominem attacks until it's time to bury your heads in the sand. Good plan and great vision.
Posted by: Krusty Krab | Dec 18, 2004 5:33:28 PM
Deborah White is onto something: namely Bush will do what he always does and use the sweet-smelling lie.
What it will look like is "well, I can't expect the economy to keep doing so great after I leave office..."
Even worse would be if he said "...these are numbers You cant argue with numbers." Or "...this has broad bipartisan support. Our economists believe in it, Joe Lieberman believes in it. These are smart people."
Or "That's not what I said, see. Social Security will start to be crisis once the budget's balanced. In 2009. There's no conflict there."
And finally "...sure it may not happen. But this is something that could tear apart the retirement of millions of seniors, many of whom happen to live in my brother Jeb's home state of Florida. I'm not just going to pretend there won't be a crisis and not deal with it. That's irresponsive."
Acting like you will get anything out of cornering him rhetorically seems somewhat moot.
Posted by: Adam M | Dec 18, 2004 6:39:35 PM
Krusty Krab,
No, "dell" did not raise any valid points. Everything he said was either factually wrong or consciously misleading.
I assume you didn't understand that. That's fine. But you should also understand that the people making the unkind comments DO understand it. They also have explained why these points are wrong or misleading about a million times.
That said, I'm happy to explain it if you'd like. Would you?
Posted by: A Tiny | Dec 18, 2004 7:53:29 PM
Based on centrist projections, we're going to have an $8 trillion social security deficit by 2035 and a $61 trillion medicare deficit.
Ummm....Dell? Based on your own comment, the Medicare crisis is 7.5 times more serious than Social Security. Why isn't your boy using his 'mandate' to reform Medicare?
Oh wait, he did....prescription drugs.....wait, that made it worse.....head. exploding.
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