For quite a few years not so long ago I was regularly posting here variations on “Today is Monday, so on the WaPo editorial page Robert J. (not related to Paul A.)* Samuelson is calling yet again for Social Security benefits to be cut,” and he did indeed do that very frequently over a long time. However, today was his final column for the Washington Post, so we shall no longer have RJS to kick around, sob! It was titled, “Goodbye, readers, and good luck – you’ll need it.” There is also a letter to the editor from former publisher, Donald Graham, praising RJS and reminiscing knowing him as a freshman in 1962 at Harvard. Graham noted RJS eschewed a nominal non-partisan position and studied and thought hard about his columns, even as Graham himself disagrees with some of RJS’s long-held positions, noting in particular RJS’s longstanding support for privatizing Amtrak. He also noted, as RJS himself stated in this final column, he is not an economist; he has merely reported on economics for a long time, starting at the Post in 1969 and columnizing on economics since as far back as 1977 in various venues.
I also disagree with RJS on privatizing Amtrak, although this is not a topic he has written much in recent years, although he did mention it in this final column. I would argue that he has ignored that governments fund highways, which gives vehicles a competitive edge on trains, which governments do not provide or support. So I certainly see a case for government aid to railroads, with Amtrak certainly one of the more heavily used lines in the nation.
I should note what RJS spent most of his last column writing about. He argues the biggest story of his career has been “the rise and fall of macroeconomics.” But then he turned to economists. Much of it is on the money. He says some nice things about us in general: “With some exceptions most are intelligent, informed, engaged and decent.” But then we have been wrong about a lot of things, such as deciding at various points that recessions will never happen again, although RJS admits that he did not recognize the housing bubble or foresee the Great Recession (some of us here or associated with us here did, but RJS largely ignored us). He also accurately notes that many economists take stronger positions than they might otherwise out of a desire for power and position in this or that administration, and also claim to have more influence on the economy than we do. And then he notes the unwillingness of most to change their minds after a certain point, something he himself exhibited on some of his more strongly held views.
Of course the one he pushed so hard for so long that I and some others of us bashed him for repeatedly was indeed his constant refrain to cut Social Security benefits, with a final swing at this in general terms in this final column: “From 2010 to 2030, the elderly’s share of the population (65 and over) is projected to rise from 13 percent to 20 percent. Spending on Social Security and Medicare will skyrocket and already is. Yet we have done little to prevent spending on the elderly from squeezing the rest of the federal budget.” So, there we are; it is Monday and yet again, if for the last time, Robert J. (not related to Paul A.) Samuelson is calling for cuts in Social Security benefits!
Of course, this statement took its more general form, throwing Social Security and Medicare in together. I must grant that this time he left them together and did not pull Social Security out separately as he did so many times in the past. But this was an old trick: point at rising trends in spending in both, which we know are much more due to rising Medicare costs, which are driven heavily by longterm rising medical care costs in general, but then he would pivot to focus on calling for cuts in Social Security benefits. This seems to reflect an old view that “nothing can be done about medical care politically” (despite Obama passing the ACA with much effort), but that somehow a compromise was politically possible on Social Security, reflecting a memory of Reagan and Tip O’Neill cutting one in 1983 with the Greenspan Commission, which raised taxes and cut benefits for Social Security. The idea that another round of this was needed was pushed by Bill Clinton in the 90s, and several bipartisan commissions were formed to pull it off, but somehow they all ran into political problems. It became this established delusion in various VSP circles that such a deal should be made, and it has remained entrenched on the WaPo ed page with Fred Hiatt and others, not just RJS.
I must note that while I beat up on him relentlessly over this matter, I have done so less in the last few years. It is not that he changed his mind, but he wrote about it much less. He noted in this final column that he is “repelled” by Trump, and so I found myself much more frequently agreeing with him as he would criticize Trump’s economic policies ranging from his “help the rich” tax cuts through his trade protectionism to his awful environmental policies. He would occasionally reprise these old views to maintain his independence, but much more of this attention was focused on the Trump policies.
A final point he made that has me thinking personally is that a reason he gave for retiring now, even as so much is going on, is his feeling of being “a man of the 20th century, but we are now facing the problems of the 21st century, which demand new policies and norms.” This may well be a major factor for him, with indeed his views on Social Security really seeming leftover from the 1990s. As he is just a few years older than I am, it makes me think that the same could be said of me, perhaps. But I did see the housing bubble and the Great Recession. I think I shall stick around for some more time.
*Regarding people related to the late Paul A. Samuelson or not but with the same name commenting on economics, it should be noted that Paul’s son, William F. Samuelson, is a fairly respectable economist who has published on risk and auctions and some other topics, now an emeritus prof from the Management Dept. at Boston University. He does not share the last name, but the prolific and prominent Lawrence Summers is Paul Samuelson’s nephew. There is also a non-relative, Larry Samuelson, a highly respected evolutionary game theorist at Yale University. In any case, Robert J. Samuelson is neither related to Paul A., nor has he been an economist, although he is probably a better non-economist economist than some others who pose as one, such as say, Larry Kudlow.
Barkley Rosser
“Better than Larry Kudlow” is a standard that you (in VA) and I (in NJ) know from the damage Larry did when he developed the budgets for Christie Todd Whitman and George Allen at the height of his addiction.
(As a side note, if you ever see Stephen Lucas [mathematics department] on campus, say hello to him for me.)
This is a long delayed addition by subtraction to WAPO. Unfortunately, I now await the inevitable subtraction by addition of his replacement. Considering their insistence on a non economist writing about economics, it will be depressing and result in my continuing refusal to pay for a subscription to that paper.
“rising trends in spending in both, we know are much more due to rising Medicare costs, which are driven heavily by longterm rising medical care costs in general, but then he would pivot to focus on calling for cuts in Social Security benefits. This seems to reflect an old view that “nothing can be done about medical care politically” (despite Obama passing the ACA with much effort),”
In comparison to commercial healthcare insurance costs, Medicare is less costly. Indeed, Kocher and Berwick called for Medicare Pricing plus 20% for hopitals alone; “no hospital should be able to charge prices that equal more than Medicare prices plus 20 percent, which is far less than many charge today (plus 89% on average) also far, far less than the 200 to 240% charged by hospitals in Michigan for catastrophic automobile accidents recently signed into law.” From 2007 – 2014, the biggest driver of premium increases has been in hospital price increases which have risen 42% between 2007 to 2014 and far greater than physician prices.
Is Medicare the driver of healthcare costs in the US? Hardly, look to commercial healthcare as the issue and with it commercial healthcare insurance tacking 15-20% on top of the healthcare industry pricing. They love higher healthcare industry prices as the increase translate to profit for them with little or no additional cost.
If the US is really ready for lower costs, scrap out the ACOs which are hindering competition through consolidation as measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschman index. Minimize the numbers of payors of cost today. The multiples of insurance companies add to hospital clerical costs to process billings. Although call Single Payor, Sanders bill called for the use of ACOs which does not alow it to be Single Payor in the true meaning of it.
Anyway, have a good day Barkley.
ah yes, met him at Harvard. so much for the meritocracy.
Robert J Samuelson is an idiot but he gets to publish because he went to Harvard.
sorry if “idiot” sounds impolite to all you meritocrats, but it is a technical term i use from time to time to describe people of low mental abilities, including those mental qukities of honesty and decency and knowing what the helll you are talking about.
speaking of hell. i suspect Robert J is retiring because his “work here is done.” they don’t need to lie so much about Social Security any more because everyone already believes the lie. Now they are getting serious about just killing SS by presidential decree.
I wonder what “studied and thought hard” means to a Harvard man: read Ayn Rand again and again?
and then there is the brilliant Larry – “africa is an under-polluted nation so we should dump our waste there” -Summers.
ah, yes, the meritocracy. and whatever became of Kerfuffle Rogoff?
I note that WaPo now has Catherine Rampell as a regular columnist, who is generally pretty good on economics, which she mostly writes about, better than RJS. However, she writes less on macroeconomics than he did.
I could not find out if she was actually an econ major at Princeton or how much she took there when she attended. She has been covering econ since she graduated from there and is married to a Columbia econ prof.
I assume you meant adieu, not au revoir.
I’d say good riddance, but there is an ever ready supply of equally awful replacements. They are probably checking in with their old house buddies even now.
I would split the adjustment between the payers and payees. The generations decide this issue, not the economists. How did we adjust last time, in 1984 or there abouts? .
Trade Protectionism??? Where???
Anonymous
hard for me to tell what you are even talking about.
as for “generations” the idea that one generation pays anothers debts is not as simple as most people think.
in the case of Social Security it is an outright lie.
in 1983 (“1984 or so”?) Reagan had a commission which designed a pretty good fix for the problem SS was faced with at the time.
they raised the tax which was necessary. they also cut benefits by raising the retirement age, which was not necessary and essentially criminal.
this was because politicians needed a “compromise.” raise taxes and (therefore) cut benefits… split the difference, don’t you know.
except the people getting the benefits were the same people paying the taxes. a tiny larger increase in the tax would have saved them two years of retirement. thinking at the time… among those who could think… was that waiting to raise the tax until it was really needed would avoid creating a larger Trust Fund / slush fund for Congress. unfortunately it also created the opportunity for “Social Security is going broke!” (and therefore must be “fixed” (cut) to be repeated for the next 37 years until everyone “knew” it was true.
Now trump is going to stimulate the economy by holidaying the payroll tax into oblivion, thus killing SS as meaningful worker paid insurance for workers, not to say giving it to “the rich” to kill at their leisure (we have the will but not the wallet… and why should we pay people for not working.
which only goes to show that it’s not only the meritocracy that is stupid and criminal… except they were the ones that engineered this whole thing.
GATT anyone?
Yes, I am talking about 1983, which we can all love or hate. It is neither lie nor truth, it is what we do. We can be hysterical a bit about how we do it next time, that is OK. We can complain to our philosophers, but we will do it about the same way we did it in 1983.
There was some events between the Nixon shock and the last SS update. For a period there we tried other stuff, like revenue sharing. So, history rhymes, and so do we. We will try all three, Trump shock, revenue sharing, and entitlement update of the generations. Likely change the order a bit.
Anonymous
i like to think I know something about Social Security, but i don’t remember what you are calling revenue sharing, unless it’s borrowing from (DI) to fund OASI or vice versa, which is not exactly revenue sharing and as far as i know always paid back. SS has been worker paid since the beginning. Roosevelt had to insist upon that because his Income Security Commission could only think in terms of welfare, which FDR knew wouldn’t work.
There has been no entitlement update of the generations that I can think of in those terms. there has been a gradual increase in the tax rate to keep up with the growth in the number insured against the number paying the tax.
the earlier benefiticaries got a sort of “windfall” except it wasn’t. SS was designed in a depression that had wiped out people’s savings. those early retirees were collecting insurance based on what they paid in at a time when the number of retirees was much smaller than the population of workers…. who eventually all got the benefits they had paid for. lots of people don’t understand this, but that is not the fault of SS… which is neither welfare nor an investment club.
you buy fire insurance and a month later you have a fire. you get a “windfall” more benefit than you paid in, still better not to have a fire…. but you are getting what you paid for. or you paid for what you are getting. that’s the way insurance works.
Trump shock is merely a crime against the stupid… which is all of us for letting him get away with it.
The “lie” is what we say about it. What we did was what was needed at the time. nobody got cheated. no one reaped undeserved profit.
if we do what we did in 1983 we will raise the payroll tax about 2% whcih would be enough for the forseeable future. it would be better to pay for it about one tenth of one percent per year. faster because of the covid recession or the trump holiday, otherwise slower. no one would feel it or even notice it if not for the Big Liars. no one will get more or less than they paid for.
come to think of it I can’t remember the Nixon shock either. What do you mean?
@Run
“…look to commercial healthcare as the issue and with it commercial healthcare insurance tacking 15-20% on top of the healthcare industry pricing. They love higher healthcare industry prices as the increase translate to profit for them with little or no additional cost.
…Minimize the numbers of payors of cost today. The multiples of insurance companies add to hospital clerical costs to process billings. Although call Single Payor, Sanders bill called for the use of ACOs which does not alow it to be Single Payor in the true meaning of it.”
[Excellent.
One parting note though is that Medicare Advantage for All is really the cat’s pajamas. Single payer to the providers for claims and membership processing efficiency, yet preserves existing private insurance employment and infrastructure with the flexibility of some coverage selection on the members dime in addition to the basic Medicare cash flow. It is the win-win scenario that evades me as to why it has not been broadly embraced. Sadly, there is traditional conservative backing for it which is the kiss of death for legislation that must be passed by polarized partisans. Yet this is clear enough compromise that an anarcho-syndicalist can see it.]
ron:
If you leave traditional Medicare for Medicare Advantage and need to come back, you will have to accept a pre-existing penalty or supplemental insurance refusal to cover you for the 20% of Part B. Furthermore Medicare traditional only increases premiums,, the advantage plans increase costs. It you are in Advantage plans, good luck to you. I’ll stay right where I am.
There are no ACOs, insurance companies in Single payor. Single payer also budgets the hospitals.
Take a moment and search healthcare on Angry Bear or just use this linK; http://angrybearblog.com/page/2?s=healthcare Some of this stuff of mine has been published. If you wish to know cost of drugs, I will give you more. I gotta go research Moderna’s wonder drug.