In Semi-Defense of the Public’s Hypocrisy
Obviously on one level Doug Elmendorf is rigth about this:
The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services.
But on another level, I think this is really mistaken. What we’re really talking about here, after all, is a future projection not a current situation. Right now, people pay more in Social Security taxes than Social Security pays out in benefits. When the United States began, in 2009, to run a very large short-term budget deficit for reasons that most economists think are perfectly good reasons to run a large short-term budget deficit, public opinion started freaking out. What we really see with the entitlement situation is a public refusal to think seriously about the future—a kind of myopia more than a refusal to pay the tab. What actually happens when the tab comes do? We’ll have to see. But I don’t think we really know what the public’s view of the coming crisis will be when it actually arrives.
46 Responses to “In Semi-Defense of the Public’s Hypocrisy”
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November 13th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Right now, people pay more in Social Security taxes than Social Security pays out in benefits
I don’t think this is right. Social Security receipts have cratered with the employment rate and as a result, right now, distributions exceed receipts.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:27 am
tab comes do
your reasoning in this post is as shoddy as your grammar. you’re essentially saying that when politicians concoct elaborate ponzi schemes like social security and take it upon themselves to redistribute income to those who “deserve” it more, and those schemes prove ultimately untenable, then it’s really the people’s fault because they don’t want it bad enough?
wake up, dude. remove yourself from the bubble that you occupy. no, i don’t want to pay the tab for social security. why? because i didn’t ask for it. show me a reasonable means tested program that provides income for impoverished elderly people and i will happily pay taxes. show me a reasonable means tested health care plan for those who can’t afford treatment, again i’ll pay the taxes. show me a reasonable social safety net and i’ll support it, but i don’t want to be wrapped up in your giant, european style, cradle-to-grave welfare state. why not? because it can’t last. that’s not myopia. that’s accounting.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:28 am
It’s “due,” not “do.”
November 13th, 2009 at 9:31 am
If the Great Reagan expands the deficit, deficits don’t matter.
If a democrat does it, look out. The sky is falling. That doesn’t even mention the fact that most of this was caused by the last POTUS (also information some are unwilling to admit).
November 13th, 2009 at 9:37 am
What will we due when the bill comes do?
November 13th, 2009 at 9:47 am
If the Great Reagan expands the deficit, deficits don’t matter.
If a democrat does it, look out.
what is this? kindergarten? “it wasn’t me. he did it!” how abou we stop playing these red team-blue team games and face up to the problem like adults? whether it’s for unecessary weapons systems or unsustainable social programs. we need to stop spending like drunken sailors. that’s it. it’s simple.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:53 am
If the Great Reagan expands the deficit, deficits don’t matter.
If a democrat does it, look out. The sky is falling.
Do you really think our kids are going to care that much which of our phony “2 parties” put this country in the poor house?
November 13th, 2009 at 9:57 am
But I don’t think we really know what the public’s view of the coming crisis will be when it actually arrives.
The search for scapegoats, followed by punishment of the innocent. Same as always. The only variables are who gets to be the scapegoat, and which category of innocents.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Well, it is people’s fault when they aggresively protest against anyone that proposes cutting or even reorganizing these programs, viz. “death panels” et al, and then the same people alternately bitch about the deficit and how taxes are too high. Gotta address that schism first.
As it is, Social Security and Medicare aren’t ponzi schemes, because there’s no guaranteed payout. When you pay your SSI every week, that’s your “I don’t have to see millions of old people starving to death on the street” tax. Medicare is similarly your “I don’t have to buy health insurance for my parents” tax, an that continues to be an excellent deal.
I’m somewhat dubious that we could come up with some kind of means-tested elder entitlement that wouldn’t raise your “REDISTRIBUTION!” hackles, boss. There’s simply no serious political constiuency for means-testing– you might demonstrate your seriousness about your proposal by citing a current legislative initiative that you’d support.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Right now it is projected we will only have enough money to pay 70% of SS benefits somewhere around 2042.
This projection depends on a lot of factors. If the economy sucks at the time, it may be sooner. If we get out of this mess and the economy stays strong, we may never even have a problem.
But, to KNOW how to “fix” SS, we need to have foreknowledge of what the next 30 or so years will bring. We don’t. It is like asking a group of politicians in the late 70s to come up with a plan to fix the current recession.
I prefer to wait. If there actually is a problem, let’s figure it out sometime in the 2030s when we are closer and have a much better understanding of what is happening.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Our kids will care a great deal about how it happened, and I for one won’t stand by and watch people tell lies about how this country was a bedrock of solvency until Barack Obama “dabbled in Socialism.”. That’s what the “red-blue” games are really all about in the end.
I find these appeals for a non-partisan dialogue galling. As if telling history was some kind of partisan act.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:18 am
That’s what the “red-blue” games are really all about in the end.
no. what they really are is fiddling while rome burns.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:20 am
As someone who will be retiring in the 2030 time horizon, I’d appreciate at least a little guidance on what I can expect, though. You can’t just tell a bunch of 60 year olds “Now that we know what’s happening, we’re going to cut your benefits by a $1000 a month.”
Of course most people my age anticipate having zero SSI income when we
retire, so making the changes now would probably cause the least pain.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:22 am
I wonder where Doug Elmendorf was when George W Bush was Stealing $3 Trillion out of Social Security — giving $2 Trillion to the 2 percent richest part of the population and using the other $1 Trillion to (partially) finance the Great Iraq Oil Grab?
Bush’s budget in 2001 projected that the federal debt would be $6 Trillion when he left office.
How did that work out?
November 13th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Clarification: Bush’s budget of 2001 projected the federal debt would only be $6 Trillion in 2009.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:25 am
j r, we had that debate about SS a long time ago– you lost; get over it. The fact is that right wing boen-again deficit hawks are all too willing to support Reagan/bush type characters while they are in office and then go full-force wingnut against responsible democrats like Clinton and Gore. It is not the job of Dems to clean up after the fiscal messes left by republicans. It his the job of democrats to enact the policies they were elected on. When you get a chance, you can vote for a fiscally conservative republican. But don’t expect to support republican locusts who run roughshod over the country and then expect democrats to put their goals aside to engage in the fiscal preening that you don’t really care enough about to support democrats over in the first place.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:29 am
If you think being apocalyptic excuses you from making sense, you’re wrong.
It is an apt metaphor in it’s way. Nero wanted to hide the fact that he wanted to rebuild Rome but didn’t want to actually buy the land to do it. Republicans want to convince their supporters that the state is on the brink of collapse and that they are the only ones that can rebuild it, when they gladly lit fires when it was popular. As long as people systematically lie about what has brought us here, Rome will continue to burn.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Tyro, it absolutely is the responsibility of responsible politicians to clean up the messes of their irresponsible predecessors. Are you really suggesting that Obama can just pretend that Bush never existed and enact the policies that he’d prefer in an ideal world?
November 13th, 2009 at 10:34 am
dantonj has the most rational take on this issue– there is no reason to destroy social security now because we think that the system will take in less money than it has to pay 30 years from now.
Meanwhile we have a lot of serious problems mow related to two wars, a health care system that needs to be reformed, and a dysfunctional political system that is always just an election away from putting a bunch of lunatic destructive republicans in charge who insist on causing enough destruction as it is when they are in the minority. Forgive me if I dp not think that SS is our most important issue at the moment.
Also, notably, all the people in the 80s screaming about how there would be no SS available for then when they retired are– starting to collect social security.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:35 am
1. Of course the public refuses to comprehend the downside of the financial future. It’s quite un-PC to discuss it and the media, academia and the entire culture avoid thinking about it all costs. How else could our unsustainable debt obligations come about anyhow?
2. The public’s quasi-purposeful ignorance of the future allows for the continued perpetuation of the Keynesian Hoax. During the artificial Fed-induced boom, things appear wonderful. The future doesn’t exist except as the continued Keynesian boom. Once all of the horrible distortions in the investment structure being to fail and collapse due to prior Keynesian policies, everyone appears totally shocked and refuses to think about the truth as to what exactly happened.
3. Reagan Reagan Reagan. Libertarian and Austrian School writers noted ad nauseum in real time that Reagan (and Dubye) were spending like mad. Just because Republicans are hypocritical dingbats about the giant flaws in their heroes does not preclude one from criticizing Democrats for similar stupid behavior.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:36 am
What we really see with the entitlement situation is a public refusal to think seriously about the future—a kind of myopia more than a refusal to pay the tab
Uh no, it has a lot more to do with having a political party full of crazies who have been allowed by the feckless press to turn the word “tax” into an obscenity.
Social Security can be fixed rather easily, IIRC, simply by removing the arbitrary salary cap on FICA taxes.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Are you really suggesting that Obama can just pretend that Bush never existed and enact the policies that he’d prefer in an ideal world?
Not completely, but for the most part, yes. Obama should do what he was elected to do. He should not get elected and then govern as the republican that bush should have been in the hopes pf impresssing the republicans who don’t like him, anyway. It is not obama’s job to enact republican policies the “right” way. It distracts from what he was elected to do, dilutes the democratic party brand, and creates incentives for republicans to behave irresponsibly if the feel that they can stymie the democrats’ agenda by forcing then to spend all their time cleaning up after republican messes.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Libertarian and Austrian School writers noted ad nauseum in real time that Reagan (and Dubye) were spending like mad.
…and then went out and voted for them anyway, because they delivered those sweet, sweet tax cuts.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Off the topic of this discussion in general, but apropos Matt’s original post, I think the use of the term “hypocracy” here (and in a lot of other political debates when attributed to the public) is a result of a catagory error. The “public” wants incommensurable things, but that doesn’t mean that any one individual does. What we have here is a large number of current retirees who don’t want their benefits touched at all and are (not entirely unreasonably) concerned that current policies designed to reduce future benefits will quickly be drawn forward and touch their benefits. Some younger people, on the other hand, would like to put entitlements on a sounder footing, largely by reducing benefits. Both groups have coherent views but it looks ridiculous when you attribute both views to the “public.”
November 13th, 2009 at 11:12 am
how abou we stop playing these red team-blue team games and face up to the problem like adults?
That’s fine with me. The problem is that one party is putting forth a patently insane economic theory of self-regulating markets and tax cuts for top income earners as the way to fix literally EVERY economic problem we face. A party that has, in practice, run up the deficit more than any President outside WWII, jacking up spending in the most reckless ways imaginable while railing against spending.
When one of the major political parties is actively spreading misinformation and governing off of economic theories that have been proved conclusively, spectacularly wrong, it’s not clear to me how the heck we can get beyond the red/blue divide! The minority leader of the house is cheering on Michelle Bachmann’s tea partiers! In response to their economic failures, they are doubling-down on destructive economic theories, and pursuing them through the most aggressive, disruptive, take-no-prisoners partisanship the Congress has seen since the latter part of the 19th Century.
Bipartisanship is like the tango. It takes two.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:14 am
The budget picture right now is bleak, but it’s not apocalyptic. Most of the expenditures in this year’s deficit are not from the stimulus or the wars but the bank bailouts. The banks are recovering (though not lending much) so those expenditures come off the books next year and (presumably, hopefully) a good deal of it will be paid back. The stimulus is a one time expenditure which, as I understand it, is paid out over ten years. It’s substantially less than it appears at first. After that, raise taxes a little and cut some spending, reign in defense – and I’m not saying that’s easy – and the budget gets back to better than it was under Bush II in a good year.
I’m a deficit hawk who hates deficits and intends to collect my SS money when it’s time for me to retire. I think Obama’s handling this situation just fine given the cards he was dealt.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Do you really think our kids are going to care that much which of our phony “2 parties” put this country in the poor house?
Uh, definitely. As someone said above, I certainly don’t want my kids believing the lie that “Socialist” Obama caused this and forming their political consciousness based on that. It matters who caused the crisis, and we know who it was.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:25 am
j r has no credibility in this debate. First, there is no political constituency for means testing these programs for the elderly. He belongs to the same tribe that would kill social security as aid for cadillac driving elderly as soon as it was means tested. But secondly, his accounting is off. I don’t know about this year since the recession was so bad, but we are still years away from a situation were payouts from social security exceeds income. There is no reason to reduce social security payments in anticipation of a future deficit when social security already has an enormous surplus. If that surplus doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to let social security run deficits until the account is actually in debt, what is the point in increasing the surplus today? That point is the fundamental reason why the social security reform today advocates are a bunch of disingenuous idiots or liars.
Here’s the real reason not to worry about your SS benefits: those benefits are slated to grow faster than inflation. That’s why as the population shifts, even if the economy is growing, the account could start to run deficits in the future. We can easily run SS surpluses if our economy continues to grow in real terms and we reduce benefit growth to only slightly more than inflation. The upshot is that it’s reasonable to expect future retirees will actually get paid more, in real terms, than current retirees without needing to increase social security taxes. The only threats to your SS payments are long term economic malaise and Republican politicians. Those are the facts.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Come on Matt.
All of this talk about long-term problems is a red herring. Even if you exclude the effects of the recession and the stimulus and the bailouts, we would have a budget deficit today. This is a reflection of a country which is not politically mature enough to tax what it spends (which you have commented on before). Things like the Bush tax cuts, Medicare part D, and unfunded wars are the examples that come to mind.
So pretending that the problem is only with regard to the future is missing the point. Yes the future is worse, but the present is pretty bad too.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Matt is right. Our current dificit has nothing to do with entitlement spending. Rather, spending on two wars and to avoid another great depression. That doesn’t ignore the potentially very large deficits in the future resulting from entitlement spending. I say “potentially” large deficits. Which I believe is the basis for Matt’s point about the public’s attitude toward deficits. As an aside, payroll (social security) taxes have far exceeded social security payments since the 1980s when social security was “saved” by the largest middle class tax increase ever; indeed, around 75% of Americans now pay more in social security taxes than income taxes. Of course, the excess collections, which supposedly are added to the “trust fund,” are simply used to pay current government expenses. Didn’t hear to many complaints about that tax increase. That couldn’t be because working class people pay most of the social security taxes? Of course not. How could anybody be so cynical.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Come on out to Aurora, Colorado, Matt. A couple of weeks ago, the myopic citizenry voted down a property tax increase intended to make up for a budget shortfall in the library system. We’re talking a few bucks a month here, in an age when people’s property values have gone down (along with their property taxes).
The result, 4 out of 7 of our libraries will close by the end of the year. What’s worse is that we knew that the libraries would close if the tax didn’t pass. No need to guess about what would happen in the future. It was right there.
Some people cried “blackmail.” Others cried “Raise my taxes in a recession? No way!” Most cried, “Let the libraries close!”
Myopia? Or a refusal to pay the tab? Definitely the latter.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Its worth reiterating Gregg Easterbrook’s point that the federal government transfers roughly $500 billion (adjusting Easterbrook’s numbers for inflation) to state governments every year, so unhappy citizens who feel their federal taxes are too high should be equally vexed that their state taxes are too low.
)
http://www.tnr.com/article/states-rites
November 13th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I think the equations on this issue are pretty simple.
First, you have entitlement spending as a moral issue. Do people deserve these basic service guarantees?
Second, you have the efficacy of government spending. Is the government the most efficient delivery system for these services?
Third, is our economic system inherently fair? Did the winners and losers deserve their fate?
Fourth, what role does taxation play in growth? Do higher tax rates inhibit investment?
Fifth, do people really deserve their wealth? Is it justified to progressively tax higher earners?
For decades the right has railed against taxation with assumptions on all five counts: People don’t deserve these guarantees; the government is wasteful and inefficient; our economic system is a meritocracy; Supply-side principles say high tax rates slow the economy; progressive taxation is immoral because it unfairly redistributes legitimately earned income.
Yet all of these assumptions hinge on a simple question: how fair is our economy – do all people have equal access to the means of success? If they do, then they should be responsible for their own fate. Neither the government nor the people have any responsibility to them. Therefore, guaranteed access to services is not necessary and they can be provided more efficiently and better by private markets. Whether or not supply-side theory is correct is really irrelevant – taxation is in principle unfair and inefficient anyway. One’s income is one’s own and should not be subject to redistribution.
Yet during these same decades more and more data has been collected that disproves the assumption that our economy is fair, and provides equal opportunity for all – something liberals have always known intuitively. Research in many fields has unraveled the complexities of human behavior and uncovered overwhelming evidence with only one conclusion: one’s success in life is solely determined by the genes they were born with and the environment that activated them throughout their life.
Starting in the womb, human development progresses according to its environmental stimulus. This includes everything from what social scientists call “human capital” (an individual’s cognitive development according to levels of lead exposure, parental linguistic feedback, peer group interaction), to what social scientists call “social capital” (an individual’s exposure to the cultural information and procedures necessary for success). Any theory is only as good as its predictions. And this theory of human development and social interaction has been confirmed repeatedly.
A simple thought experiment gives you an idea of what to expect: take two embryos and place one in the belly of a happy white mother from a wealthy, educated, functional family in Connecticut. Place the other in a 17 year old black girl in Detroit who is 4 grade levels behind with anger issues, her father incarcerated, her mother addicted to methamphetamines , her home with high levels of lead and pests, etc. – you get the idea.
The obvious predicted outcomes for each child are intuitively quite different. One child would seem to have quite an advantage over the other. But what researchers have done is isolated specific factors that can be applied to each situation with powerfully predictive results. Zooming out to the macro level – looking at populations in the tens of thousands, this application of data analysis gives us a clear understanding of what it takes to be successful.
The most common reaction to all of this from the right is to dismiss it, with an appeal to free will. They will point to one or another example of a man who has “risen to the top” despite all all odds. Coming from truly wretched circumstances, he has faced down adversity and by sheer pluck and determination achieved success. If he could do it, goes the argument, then anyone could. They just have to “choose” it.
This narrative is appealing. America is full of stories such as these. Its very founding was in a sense an expression of this sensibility – the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity – writ large. And it seems reasonable: we have set up a society that encourages the freedom to achieve greatness through individual effort. It would seem that all one has to do is work hard, make the right choices and success is easily within reach.
But this story is deceptively simple. It overlooks some basic realities of human development. For starters, “the exception does not prove the rule”. These individual examples indeed seem heroic. But this is precisely because we all understand intuitively that these men were outliers. The fact that we see them as exceptional is based on the reality that most in their circumstance do not fare the same. Statistical demographic data bears this out. The children of poor Detroit do not succeed at the same rate as the children of wealthy Connecticut. What must it be then about the poor children of Detroit that makes them “choose” to be unsuccessful? And what then allows the children of wealthy Connecticut NOT to choose to be unsuccessful.
Well, we know why. In fact, we know exactly why. And it has nothing to do with “choice”. If a child born to poor Detroit had access to sufficient human and social capital, the likelihood of his success would be virtually guaranteed. He would make the right “choice” every time. And if the child of wealthy Connecticut only had access to low levels of human and social capital, his likelihood for success would be rather dismal.
This can all be backed up by data. Countless devoted people all over the country are working tirelessly on finding ways to close this gap. How it will be done is a difficult proposition. There are no easy answers. But one thing is clear: all people do not have equal access to the means of success; all people do not have access to the means of freedom to self-actualize. Accordingly, it is then our job as compassionate and rational, civilized citizens to do whatever it takes to achieve this. It is our constitutional obligation.
The only way to guarantee equal access to human and social capital is through government services. Charity or private industry might fill in the gaps here and there. But if we are to truly offer equal access to every citizen, government is the only entity with the means to do so. This of course requires funding, and thus taxation. As we have already established, success is dependent on genetic and social circumstance. Earned income is dependent on success. Therefore, earned income is dependent on genetic and social circumstance. It is perfectly moral then to enact a system of progressive taxation. In fact, it would be immoral not to do so.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
It is a refusal to pay the tab. Seniors in Medicare are getting about (on average)$120,000 more per person out of the entitlement than they ever paid in. But just watch seniors complain if any cut in spending is contemplated, or any rate hike discussed. They may say that they paid into Medicare for years, and it is unfair to reduce benefits, but their payments amount to about only a third of what is being spent, so they are not “entitled” to that much. The medicare trust fund we all pay into all our working lives is already almost completely depleted.
Then you hear seniors complaining about other spending and talking about how they don’t want to leave a financial mess for their grandchildren. So seniors, stop promising to vote against any congressperson or senator who would consider such an option.
Our electorate is irresponsibly refusing to elect politicians who admit that Medicare needs to be overhauled, and now politicians won’t even say anything out loud about it for fear of losing elections. Our leaders can’t lead because if they tell us things we don’t want to hear we don’t elect them.
Seriously, we are driving towards a financial cliff, and the sooner we step on the breaks, the less jarring it will be.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Obviously, you believe we should set aside our differences and let one party try its agenda at putting out the fire. Should it be the party with the president and majorities in both houses, or the other one?
Or maybe a fascisti should sieze power and do exactly what you want.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Those bastards are just luxuriating in their MRI machines, laughing at the rest of us.
It isn’t senior citizens who are getting the money, it is the providers. Hospitals, doctors, testing labs and medical equipment manufacturers are the ones profiting from high medicare spending. Senior citizens are actually harmed by it.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Njorl,
very interesting point, but seniors have been very politically involved in preventing medicare reform.
The AMA is guilty too.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Count me among the “myopic” people who don’t want to wreck the real economy in order to solve this alleged problem in the monetary economy.
The fiscal crisis in Social Security is entirely imaginary.
What happens when the tab comes due? We pay it! The US Treasury cannot run out of money.
The bigger issue is a sort of quasi-malthusian one – in a world where people live to be really old, will the economy produce enough resources to give those people a decent standard of living?
Greenspan talked explicitly about this in an interview at one point, though I can’t find the text at the moment.
So how do we make sure that the economy produces enough resources to keep old folks in cardigans and Bit O Honeys? Interesting question! Unfortunately there’s no bandwidth to discuss that question because we’re all busy trying to solve a looming crisis that doesn’t exist.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Hey, myopic Ape Man,
Please convince me it is a non-problem so I won’t have to worry about it. It is true that social security is projected to be solvent for decades, but the medicare trust fund is on the verge of going bust right now.
With about 40 million seniors currently projected to have in excess of $100,000 spent on each of them beyond what they contributed (exceeding what they paid in, that is), that adds up to $4 trillion in unpaid for medicare expenses for our current crop of seniors.
Too bad when I get old the well shall have run dry…..
November 13th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
So when “the well” runs dry, what happens? Does the US Treasury start bouncing checks?
November 13th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
(To clarify)
Above, when I said “unpaid for medicare expenses” I meant unpaid for by the recipients. Those bills will be paid. We younger people and our kids will pay them.
$4 trillion!! That is a big portion of the national debt.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
First, you have to stop conflating Social Security with medicare. The current “doomsday” projection for Social Security is that in about 2042, the trustfund will run dry and benefits will be paid only from incoming payroll taxes. That will mean a 30% reduction in benefits. However, that will be a 30% reduction from levels that will have been increased from current levels signifficantly. Even allowing for inflation, that 70% benefit will be more generous than what people receive now.
We also don’t need to lay the whole burden on that cohort of elderly. Very small amounts of payroll tax increases, means testing and benefit reductions phased in a decade before the well runs dry would make Social Security sustainable to an infinite horizon. The thing is, none of it might be necessary at all if our economy does marginally better than predicted over the next 30 years.
The big problem is medicare. It is not sustainable, nor can any small changes make it so. However, the problem isn’t really medicare, it’s all aspects of health care. Private health insurance is not sustainable either. Businesses which try to maintain current levels of employee health care will go bankrupt long before the federal government does.
Now if only someone would attempt a significant overhaul of our healthcare system.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Understood. So now, answer the question. When medicare or social security or whatever it is “runs out of money,” what happens? Do social security checks bounce? Medicare checks? What happens?
November 13th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Coupla points here:
When J.R. shows me some posts of his from 2002 or thereabouts making this same complaint about Bush Jr. I’ll believe that he’s sincere. Not before.
The other point also goes to the issue of trust. Suppose that the Democrats do what J.R. proposes – does anyone seriously think he’s going to vote for them the next time around on that basis? Even if the other party pulls a repeat of the last ten years? Trust is earned, not given.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Oh, one more point, which goes to who’s paying how much, and what are they getting out of it.
Right now, SS is snuff, Medicare/Medicaid maybe not so much, but not so bad yet either. Note that these are paid for with decidedly non-progressive taxes, out of the pay checks of Joe Average.
So where is the deficit coming from? I’ll tell you where it’s coming from: it’s coming from trillion-dollar bailouts of the banking system. It’s coming from trillions of dollars for unnecessary foreign adventures. It’s coming from billion-dollar subsidies to agribusiness. And so on and so forth.
No, the little guy is pretty much pulling his weight. It’s the fat cats who spending, and spending, and spending, and all the while telling the rest of us that by not spending in proportion for the programs that benefit them, the rest of us slackers are somehow being carried by the lions of society.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
I’ll associate myself with Scent’s sentiments to some degree, but it’s worth noting that TARP doesn’t actually contribute to the deficit. It’s a Fed regulatory action, not a Treasury expenditure.