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Topical thread March 9, 2011

Dan Crawford | March 9, 2011 11:35 am

Comments (5) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
5 Comments
  • Rdan says:
    March 9, 2011 at 11:37 am

    rdan, Bruce, and coberly,  
     
    I was wondering what your take on the seeming focus on SS vs looking at the real disasters of medicare/medicaid?  SS in comparison to those two programs is the definition of efficiency and good government. Is it becuase that’s were the money is? Buffpilot

  • Rdan says:
    March 9, 2011 at 11:42 am

    There will be more thorough answers I am sure, but there has been several crisis declared in the political arena that never happened but were well advertised over the last 30 years.  So a lot of money has been spent on the topic over decades.

    Why now, again, in lieu of the the health care inflation in this country??  Well, maybe to date, medicare hasn’t had the scrutiny and advertizing so is a harder target politically?

  • ilsm says:
    March 9, 2011 at 12:06 pm

    the ‘medi’ issues are bleeding occurring worse in the future than now, there are issues that need addressed now.

    GAO released the annual report on “issues with certifying federal financial books”.

    At spending 20% of US outlays how come we cannot figure out what it gets or how much anything worth?  the issue relates to waste fraud and abuse.

    And why call medicine a disater when the war industries are performing so abyssmally?

    From today:  http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-363T  
     
    “Three major impediments continued to prevent GAO from rendering an opinion on the federal government’s accrual-based consolidated financial statements: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense, (2) federal entities’ inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.”  

  • coberly says:
    March 9, 2011 at 12:36 pm

    Buff

    it’s because the medical costs “disaster” is being deliberately conflated with Social Security to give the Big Liars their next big chance to kill Social Security which they have been trying to do for seventy years, using every “new thing” as the reason why it has to be “fixed NOW!”

    it’s not the money. SS doesn’t cost them anything.  it’s that they think its “socialist.”  because they don’t understand it.  The rich also don’t like the poor to be “independent”.  it makes them harder to manage.  And there is some evidence that they think that if you don’t have Social Security they canforce you to work a few more years… which turns out to be worth about ninety thousand a year per worker per year to them on average.   

    Also they can count on poor people not to save their money without Social SEcurity, so that is that much more money that comes their way “now” that they don’t have to wait for you to spend after you retire.  After you have spent all your money they don’t care whether you live or die.

  • ilsm says:
    March 9, 2011 at 1:42 pm

    It goes with ideology, not so much money.  Some wish to conflate SS, medicaid (US part as well a states’)and medicare as one program.  Others correctly remind them that they are different.  Tyler Cowan conflated the SS and medicare in his NY Times article 5 Mar.  He also did a couple of posts on his blog about differences between the right and left wing economists.  Tellingly, he criticized the left wing for keying on individual programs rather than the bigger often artificial interactions. My response is yes work the bigger trends but do it considering the individual programs to understand that the top level conclusions are contrived if a detailed study is not done of the underlying cases.  Checking causes to effect seems to be a problem with Cowen so he conflates things. Conflating SS with medicaid gets in the way of reasoning, which is what the right needs to do.  Cannot stand to do inductive reasoning on why there is a problem with any social program so lump them all together. If the right were interested in money it would be after the military industrial complex.And getting pentagon books in order would be a start, but would scare everyone.

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