by Linda Beale The right’s smoke and mirrors scam about Social Security–it ain’t broke (unless China is too) We’ve noted in these postings the growing inequality between rich and the rest of us in America, and that is the appropriate backdrop against which to investigate further the right’s smoke-and-mirrors scams about tax policy and earned […]
Angry Bear archives reminds us of the longstanding strategies embedded in the current political debate, and trial balloons of possible current Super Committee proposals November 22, 2011. The Social Security surplus as a significant amount of money is recent, in the last fifteen years or so: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 Three-Card Monte Following up on […]
by Dale Coberly WHAT KOTLIKOFF (REALLY) SAID Larry Kotlikoff responded to my post in comments (Social Security: It’s Just Math). by saying that I (coberly) “wrote quite a lot about something I [Kotlikoff] didn’t really say.” He has a point. I based my speculations about where he obtained his misleading numbers on an NPR summary […]
Update: By Dale Coberly (was inadvertently omitted as author, although regulars know and the label names him) SOCIAL SECURITY: IT’S JUST MATH or how to lie with numbers “Math doesn’t lie” seems to be the new focus group tested mantra about Social Security that Congressmen and their journalists are so proud to repeat. What it […]
by Dale Coberly ARITHMETIC MATTERS I was thinking that someone could fault my essay the other day about the “Intelligence Squared” debate. I said that Howard Dean’s side did not really help anyone understand why, or what, or how to “save the program.” I hope I helped explain the why and what, but I probably […]
by Dale Coberly INTELLIGENCE SQUARED DEBATE OFFERS LITTLE IN THE WAY OF ACTUAL INTELLIGENCE I am reading a short article on the Intelligence Squared debate I previously referred to in Social Security For the Young. It turns out they were more concerned with “insurance” than with Social Security. But they don’t seem to understand the […]
Since the thread from Dale Coberly’s post on Social Security for the Young has over 120 comments, and many are not short but could be essays by themselves, I am starting a companion thread for the conversation to contine.
by Dale Coberly Social Security For The Young Intelligence Squared U.S. (corrected link: http://intelligencesquaredus.org/) is sponsoring an Oxford-style debate Tuesday evening in Manhattan. The program is entitled “Grandma’s Benefits Imperil Junior’s Future” The resolution: “Commitments made to seniors decades ago failed to foresee the harsh economic realities of the present. Do entitlements saddle our children […]
Brad DeLong points us to a post from The Nation on early Koch brothers and Hayek The Road to Serfdom!! Yasha Levine and Mark Ames: Charles Koch to Friedrich Hayek: Use Social Security!: [I]n early June 1973, weeks after [Charles] Koch was appointed president of the Institute for Humane Studies. Along with his brothers, Koch […]
(Still cross posted from dKos. But since coberly and I have an extended colloquy there maybe not a bad place to start)Part 1 was kind of a set-up in both senses of the word in that it didn’t really deliver on the post title. But I think a necessary set-up and so lets resume. When […]