His first post claims Noam Scheiber and Josh Marshall do not wish to save Social Security. Of course, anyone with an IQ above the teens would realize that Josh and Noam are mocking the there is no Trust Fund canard. Ponnuru is not stupid so I suspect he has gone for sheer dishonesty as in his second posts:
The argument ignores the generational point: We're talking about different people. If you want to take money back from the affluent people who got supposedly unfair income-tax cuts in the 1980s, raising taxes on high earners from 2009 on isn't the way to do it.
Wait a second here. I’ve been paying those higher payroll taxes since I was 28 years old but now I’m only 52 years old. Guess what? I’m not retired. Nor are many of the other folks who benefited from the Reagan tax cuts. Ponnuru also leaves out the fact that we did see our tax rates go up in the 1990’s with the current General Fund mess being created by tax “cuts” (more like deferrals) that we passed just a few years ago. We might also remember that rich old people leave estates for their kids who become rich young people – especially with the Estate Tax on its way out.
His third “contribution” was an attack on Robert Ball:
So even if people get checks that keep up with inflation and wage growth and get them just as long as they used to - because the age of eligibility goes up but so do lifespans - it's still a "cut," unless total Social Security spending goes up to cover inflation, wage growth, and rising longevity.
The 1983 Social Security reforms were predicated on the premise that real wages and life spans would inch up over time. As far as I can tell, we have not had an unexpected increase in life spans. We have had faster productivity growth that was expected but that makes the system more solvent not less.
7 comments:
pgl,
Yes, this is pretty stupid. But then we have seen so much seriously stupid stuff said about soc. sec. that I do not think this takes the cake, stupid as it is. Is it stupider than George W. Bush's comments in his State of the Union message in 2005 when he made his push for doing something to social security?
Barkley
It is hard to get more stupid than what George Bush said. And it certainly is not the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the National Review. But Ramesh should stop pretending he's the rational one. Especially when he refer to the Democrats are the Party of Death. Ah but that's a different topic!
Its particularly odd since every proposal from the Right starts from the position of benefit cuts.
We could have a sensible discussion about whether the current schedule does in fact properly balance out utility and equity between my interest as a current worker vs my future interests as future retiree. Instead the other side is demanding I ignore the current utility of that extra two points of payroll I have been paying since 1983 and simply accept the fact that I will be getting less utility going forward. Well sorry to be crass but what's in this for me?
If we were having the discussion 80% or more of America thinks we are having, i.e. benefit cuts today to prevent total benefit cutoffs in the future ('bankrupt' 'it won't be there for me') it would be one thing. But though it is possible I don't even think the idiots at the Corner believe the cartoon version of 'Crisis'. Which doesn't mean they won't trot it out as necessary.
Our buddy Dale gets so frustrated that there is no discussion of the numbers, and Barkley has expressed similar thoughts, well me too but not recently. The original introduction to my website posed this as a question of numbers.
This site aims to put the debate over Social Security privatization firmly on a numeric basis. There is a lot of rhetoric flowing, but little focus on the economic assumptions underlying the talk of the Trust Fund going broke in some future year, "requiring" some effort to fix the system. Is it really "broke"? Does it even need a fix? The numbers suggest not.
Well that was November 2004. By July 2005 I had wised up.
This site is all about the numbers. You get links to every Social Security Report from 1942 to 2005, you get breakouts to particular tables from all Reports from 1997 to 2005, you get some explications of what those tables mean. The numbers are important, if you are going to participate in the debate over the future of Social Security you need to understand them, you need to understand their implications, you need to be able to measure them against the numbers you read in the paper every day. Because oddly enough this debate is not about numbers and in most respects it never has been.
These folk don't want Social Security to be a success, just as they fundamentally don't care about the economics of Universal Coverage or Single Payer, 'proof' that one outcome is more efficient or equitable means nothing to them, that's just the Road to Serfdom. What does this mean on a practical basis? They cheat. And whether the media are actual participants is beside the point. This battle like opinion Iraq is largely being shaped by discourse outside the Village.
You da man, Bruce. I may have "the law," you da man.
Yes, we must pound on the numbers every time someone claiming to be intelligent and knowledgeable starts driveling on about the crisis and their pet scheme to "fix" it. Period.
Pound, pound, pound, pound, ....
Barkley, "the Law Man"
A certain troglodyte who will go unnamed (his Brother's have made fine suits and shirts for decades) has leaked over from Economist's View to Dean Baker's 'Beat the Press'. You don't want to feed them, yet their particular method of seeming rationality demands some response, and still I am out of a supply of 'Troll BeGone'. Interestingly enough the Troll infestation at Angry Bear seems to have subsided in recent weeks, maybe the Cactus treatment of drowning them with data is effective after all. We can only hope. Then again this particular pest took what would have been a typical 20 comment thread at Thoma's out to near 300 out of pure obstinacy. Hopefully I didn't leave a trail to this site.
Just for the record, pgl, I do not seem to be able to post comments at Angrybear. Not sure why not.
Barkley
bruce
by way of agreeing with you, i think, i would only add the "it's not fair" argument vanishes when you look at the numbers.
mostly because the numers are too small to see.
i got pretty frustrated with Orszag because he gave credence to the "no fair" school with his "legacy debt."
the fact is there is no way to meaningfully compare the "fairness" of what one generation paid as against what another generation pays, when you start taking into account what is the "real" value of money, what do you use it to buy, what wars or depressions did you have to fight, what other taxes did you pay, who paid for your schools and roads and internets, and defense against the evil empire...
not saying there cannot be so egregious an imbalance across generations that an effort should not be made to even things out a bit. but egregious is not a few pennies over fifty years of dubious "coulda shoulda woulda" made it in the market if only i didn't have to pay for dad's retirement. (because he spent HIS money on my education, and that got left off the generational accounting books.)
just a long way of saying you are right. they don't want to talk numbers except when they can pick and choose the numbers.
but that's exctly why i keep insisting we need to talk about the numbers. and find a way to explain them to the people.
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