[Speed Gibson,
Tuesday February 8, 2005 at 9:22pm]
Still Clueless on Social Security
Have you noticed that when the argument is the weakest, the rhetoric is the strongest in the Star Tribune? Like the John Kerry endorsement last fall, a Jan 17 editorial claimed that President Bush et al were flat-out lying about Social Security, using words like vile, phony, despicable fear-mongering, and snookered. On January 25, this adolescent outburst was easily and calmly refuted by William Beach, co-author of the 1998 Heritage Foundation study that the editorial focused on.
Undaunted and unreproved, this past Sunday we got another dose, this one aimed at the younger workers. Again, churlish rhetoric like so many deceptions, taken to the cleaners, peddled by the White House, and bamboozled, alert us that another weak argument is present. Actually, it's worse this time. There's some outright lying going on here, like the part about the government "loaning" you your own money to invest privately under the President's proposal. Regarding the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the copy editor missed the "highly regarded liberal think tank in Washington" phrase, which should have read "the Washington think tank highly regarded by liberals." A few minutes of Google turned up no general praise for this organization, even in Massachusetts where they've played the part of "Chicken Little" regarding proposed state tax cuts.
I am still waiting for the Star Tribune to explain what happened to the wide bi-partisan consensus in 1998-99 that Social Security needed significant re-financing despite the high economic growth and low unemployment back then. The ratio of payers to payees falls with each succeeding year, and the "worst economy of the past 50 years" that replaced the Clinton boom could only have weakened the Social Security trust fund versus the 1998 forecast. Yet now, suddenly, there is no crisis, no need to act at all.
Getting back to the article, it is the younger workers who need Social Security reform the most. It is the Star Tribune that is doing the bamboozling here. To recast an argument made in a couple of blogs, suppose the Bush plan was the current law of the land. Would a young worker eagerly embrace the "new" plan of total government control, eliminating all vested ownership, producing a meager 1% or so rate of return if any, and requiring a modest annuity as payment when you retire?
To borrow a phrase, only someone who wants to be taken to the cleaners.
Undaunted and unreproved, this past Sunday we got another dose, this one aimed at the younger workers. Again, churlish rhetoric like so many deceptions, taken to the cleaners, peddled by the White House, and bamboozled, alert us that another weak argument is present. Actually, it's worse this time. There's some outright lying going on here, like the part about the government "loaning" you your own money to invest privately under the President's proposal. Regarding the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the copy editor missed the "highly regarded liberal think tank in Washington" phrase, which should have read "the Washington think tank highly regarded by liberals." A few minutes of Google turned up no general praise for this organization, even in Massachusetts where they've played the part of "Chicken Little" regarding proposed state tax cuts.
I am still waiting for the Star Tribune to explain what happened to the wide bi-partisan consensus in 1998-99 that Social Security needed significant re-financing despite the high economic growth and low unemployment back then. The ratio of payers to payees falls with each succeeding year, and the "worst economy of the past 50 years" that replaced the Clinton boom could only have weakened the Social Security trust fund versus the 1998 forecast. Yet now, suddenly, there is no crisis, no need to act at all.
Getting back to the article, it is the younger workers who need Social Security reform the most. It is the Star Tribune that is doing the bamboozling here. To recast an argument made in a couple of blogs, suppose the Bush plan was the current law of the land. Would a young worker eagerly embrace the "new" plan of total government control, eliminating all vested ownership, producing a meager 1% or so rate of return if any, and requiring a modest annuity as payment when you retire?
To borrow a phrase, only someone who wants to be taken to the cleaners.