or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
January 10, 2005
Thanks For Making It Clear, Washington Post!
Here's a helpful editorial about Social Security from yesterday's Washington Post (via Josh Marshall):
The Bush administration appears ready to control the rising cost of benefits for retirees. Some sort of cost control is likely to be part of any honest reform to the system, and the Bush proposal has some logic...Some argue that [promised benefits aren't] a problem... But given that future tax increases are inevitable to pay for soaring medical costs and for the deficits brought on by Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress, it's not responsible to fix Social Security's funding shortfall exclusively by raising taxes. Some cost control makes sense.
I will explain the logic if anyone wants, but here's what the Washington Post is saying: Because of Bush's tax cuts and out of control spending on Iraq, etc., we must cut Social Security benefits.
Now, you might think we could repeal Bush's tax cuts and overspending, and keep Social Security. Nope, I'm sorry. The Washington Post has already decided: we're going to keep the tax cuts and spending, and cut Social Security.
That's just the way it is. And if you don't like it, move to some country that isn't run by the Washington Post.
Posted at January 10, 2005 08:30 AM | TrackBackFrom The Phony Crisis, p. 9:
[If people are forced] to save and invest their money in privatized accounts ... [then] [t]he government will have to certify certain mutual funds for participation in the system [and] protect against fraud and other forms of abuse. There will be a lot of political pressure to bail out funds that go bankrupt.When I saw this I realized that there's a phrase I have yet to hear in of the discussion I've read on Social Security, namely 'savings & loan bailout'.
Now I realize there may not be much similarity between Social Security privatization and S&L deregulation, but the above quote at least suggests that Bush's plans could lead directly to the same kind of expensive government rescue as the S&L failures caused—except in this case it would be a permanent drain on the government until people got upset enough to repeal privatization. It just seems likely that the people managing these funds would go after risky strategies—funds with high returns will attract more investment from the privatized accounts—and since the funds will expect to get bailed out if they go bust, they'll end up competing at some kind of high risk investment brinksmanship and leave a trail of wreckage that the taxpayer will end up paying for.
And I'm also thinking about those Enron tape recordings, and the fact that those are the sort of people that any regulatory system set up by Bush cronies is likely to cater to.
Have you seen anybody try to make a more grounded version of this argument? Or am I way off base here? Or has everyone just forgotten S&L so it's pointless to try to make political arguments based on it?
Posted by: plover at January 11, 2005 09:55 AMFormer congressman Charlie Stenholm (D-TX) said something on CSPAN about how Social Security is paying out more than it's taking in (so how could any program like that be considered sustainable, yadda yadda). He made it sound like this was happening now. This is just flatly false, correct? And is contradicted by the SSA's own numbers?
Posted by: plover at January 11, 2005 10:10 PM
