Social Security has zero fiscal problems – the claim that it will need to reduce payments by 20% in 26 years is based on assuming that the economy will soon get much worse, and stay that way for good.
Social Security has zero to do with the debt. In fact, it’s forbidden by law from contributing to the debt.
But Social Security is about to get gutted under the guise of this pretend debt crisis. Even though it has nothing to do with this crisis, even if it were a real crisis.
Pete Peterson and company will finally be able to grab the $2.6 trillion (and growing) trust fund, the largest single bank account in the world. They’ll feast on fois gras and $350 bottles of wine, and light their cigars with $100,000 bills. Well done!
Old people: enjoy your peas and cat food.
…a police interview method where one police officer treats an interviewee relatively well compared to another officer that threatens and may beat the person. The good cop becomes the friend and gets the interviewee to confess to crimes that he may or may not have done. Of course, both cops work together.
In the political arena one party plays lesser evil and another party (guess who!) plays ultimate evil. The ultimate evil threatens to pull the fillings from the teeth of all people making under $1mil/yr to pay for the bankster’s fraud. Lesser evil will compromise and pull only those teeth that inhabit the mouths of those aged 60 or over. Party sycophants on both sides cheer the resolution. Both parties work together.
Peas & cat food (I don’t think you mean salmon.) might not be too bad. The New York Times has run a teaser. Isn’t this the way it’s done? Then snowball the idea so that it is the norm in a few years.
So, what is the purpose of the FEMA camps?
I jest, however. After all, what civilized society would kill off its own people? Nah!, it will never happen. No sense in being paranoid.
I wonder if there is enough Cipro for 1% of the population? How messy would be the cleanup?
“If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost. –Barack Obama
I agree with the gist of this post, but I think that underlying the arguments is a technical point–are we likely to see 2% growth or 3% growth over the long term going forward–that doesn’t translate well into the impassioned political debate re social security. On the one hand, if we expect the future to be like the past, then we would be right to view social security cutback proposals as scaremongering etc. On the other hand, the mortgage crisis was based, fundamentally, on the idea that the future would be like the past, which was great until it wasn’t.
had only been seen for a few years , the US economy has grown at a pretty modest 3% or so for many decades. Also, you can look at Trustee estimates of growth from decades past – they have consistently projected growth that was substantially lower than what was actually experienced.
Given that
1. even if GDP growth (and productivity growth, by the way) goes south, we still have 26 years before there’s a problem, and
2. the fix is reasonably easy if there actually is a problem (e.g., a lot cheaper than the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 5% of Americans)
then I don’t see why we need to fix this now under the guise of reigning in the deficit (which SS doesn’t even contribute to). It simply doesn’t make sense unless there’s something sketchy going on.
Then by the end of the Clinton years there were (theoretical) economic dicussions about what would happen if the US paid off its debt and it wasn’t floating bonds anymore.
So the future is very hard to predict and gloom and doom claims are usually wrong (just remembered this one from the 70’s- defense inflation was so high that by 2020 it would take the entire defense budget to buy 1 plane).
Hard to say now though- we’re really in uncharted territory.
You paid off the deficit, between the long line of Reagan tax increases, the Bush 1990 tax increase and the Clinton tax increase.