From one of the stalwart liberal bloggers:
http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002170.html#more
Paul’s been working on these themes for a while, but it’s kind of frightening to see it all in one place. We’re going to be in serious trouble in 20 years.
Man, that was great. You are really on a roll today. I had forgotten how much funnier Krugman’s themes are when he assumes (correctly) that his audience will be predisposed to accept it.
The US isn’t going to reach Argentian levels of public debt in the next twenty years?
We’ve been here before, J. The great thing about Krugman is that he seizes on the obvious and then uses the opposite of Occam’s razor to dissect it. It’s as if economics were being described by the guys who came up with the scientific and continuity explanations on Star Trek.
Nope, not going to take that for an answer - how are the permanent structural deficits Bush has opened up going to be resolved, LK? They’re not going to disappear on their own; as Krugman points out, there’s only 3 outcomes - tax increases, the elimination of Social Security and Medicare, and Argentine-style financial crackup.
I think tax increases are possible, albeit unlikely, and consider the elimination of SS/Medicare virtually impossible, so that leaves the last.
Projecting forward with no policy changes, the US deficit will become catastrophic when the boomers near retirement.
I think claiming Bush is not only the one that opened up that can of worms, but is representative of a new movement that will wholly undermine the Spirit Of America is the sort of high blown rhetoric that is unacceptable from an economist. Essentially, saying tax cuts are at fault because government spending is bankrupting the country is thinking only an idiot could admire if it fails to even take into account the possibility of spending cuts and what possible benefits they could have.
Now, I’m full of oodles of agreement that Bush cutting taxes while increasing the size of the budget is something that is plainly a bad idea. I don’t think that is an insight on the order of magnitude that Mr. Krugman and his fan club make it seem. And when that is decorated by utterly ridiculous ramblings about vast right wing conspiracies and a refusal to even consider other factors as relevant issues (see: cutting spending), it ruins any value the foundational statement had.
Tax increases are not only possible, but likely. Eliminating SS/Medicare is only impossible for you to conceive ideologically, it is also politically unlikely, since democracies, even when restrained by the format of a republic, have a long tradition of only voting themselves more benefits once they get the hang of it.
The difference (well, one at least) is that you see the impending bankruptcy of this system as a direct result of Bush’s failure to plan to accomodate the vision of a protowelfare state successfully. I see it as the inevitable consequence of the expansion of the role of government to things it cannot do efficiently or well, and definitely not cost-effectively. People like Krugman that colour the debate with bullshit like
“OH MY (nondenomenational, potentially secular) GOD! THESE EVIL UNAMERICAN PEOPLE WANT TO CHANGE THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN THE SAME FOR A WHILE! DON’T THEY KNOW THAT MAKES THEM SACROSANCT?”
are no better than the fucking idiots on the “right” who brand any form of dissent with foreign policy treason.
Like I said, we’ve been down this road before, and I enjoy these discussions least when they are based around the interpretation of pundits rather than the issues themselves.
Argentina, while it is a convenient analogy for hyperbole (rather like the Hitler of economics) is not the same thing for a lot of reasons. I am even less interested in a tangential debate over Argentine history at the moment, but unless you’re making very specific comparisons, it is something of an empty point to keep harping at.
Let’s not forget, in the Retardican world, money is just paper and numbers.
Such insiteful commentary - please keep lavishing your razor wit upon us.
Projecting forward with no policy changes…
…is silly. You use the exact same reasoning to deduce that multi-level marketing will make you a millionaire in 30 days.
A combination of tax-cut rollbacks and entitlement trimming is in the cards over the next 10-20 years.
LK, as I pointed out in the other thread, it’s not that the right favors eliminating SS & Medicare; it’s that they don’t level with the population about it. Do you think the average voter knows that conservatives actually want to eliminate Medicare?
Again, the issue isn’t policy preference per-se, it’s democracy. We’re headed for a fiscal train wreck, and the Bush administration’s reaction is to exacerbate that train wreck (by making even bigger deficits) and then hope they can use the crisis to shove through some stuff they want by bending the political system until it screams.
If they want to scale back the size of government, would it kill them to honestly admit it? God forbid they tell the public what they really want. They do it, of course, because they rightly suspect that no one would vote to get rid of Social Security or Medicare, so they think that maybe they can trick us out of them instead.
Argentina, whatever; “currency panic” will suffice. Unless taxes are increased or spending cut, the deficit will get so large that it becomes very easy for the US to suffer a third-world style run on the currency.
If conservatives want to keep the current welfare state (privitazed social security or not), they need to raise taxes a good deal. If not, they need to cut spending - us Democrats aren’t going to do it.
Yes. I also think you confuse “Republican” with “conservative” a great deal. And I am not even sure what conservative means to you anymore, other than as a broad category to encompass things with which you disagree.
Again, the issue isn’t policy preference per-se, it’s democracy. We’re headed for a fiscal train wreck, and the Bush administration’s reaction is to exacerbate that train wreck (by making even bigger deficits) and then hope they can use the crisis to shove through some stuff they want by bending the political system until it screams.
Yes; I once heard someone describe it as akin to making an alcoholic bankrupt to cure him. And, again, I don’t think it’s the cause of the problem, I don’t think it’s worst that’s been done to it, and I don’t think it, in and of itself, is the number one reason for whatever crises may arise.
If they want to scale back the size of government, would it kill them to honestly admit it? God forbid they tell the public what they really want. They do it, of course, because they rightly suspect that no one would vote to get rid of Social Security or Medicare, so they think that maybe they can trick us out of them instead.
I think you overestimate the degree of top secret intel you are privy to; also, like I said in the other thread, the difference with their “trickery” is that I agree with the long term goals. Whereas the other side is selling lies AND bad ideas.
Argentina, whatever; “currency panic” will suffice. Unless taxes are increased or spending cut, the deficit will get so large that it becomes very easy for the US to suffer a third-world style run on the currency.
Just as I thought. The currency panic is a small part of the whole. In any case, we are destined for bankruptcy whether Bush is in charge or not; baby boomer retirement + welfare will take care of that. I don’t think rushing the crisis to a point before that is necessarily the best means of dealing with it, but it beats the alternative, which is apparently more empty promises and taxes, followed by more entitlements, etc.
If conservatives want to keep the current welfare state (privitazed social security or not), they need to raise taxes a good deal. If not, they need to cut spending - us Democrats aren’t going to do it.
I completely agree with the latter statement. But it does not follow from this to Krugman’s deranged paranoia. It really doesn’t.
You’re right, both the conservatives and libertarians in the GOP are partly to blame for this.
So anyway: Krugman’s right that the hardcore people running the GOP want to eliminate Medicare and SS. He’s right that they’re intentionally running up big deficits. He’s right that unless taxes are raised or medicare & SS eliminated, we’re going to see a currency panic.
…but he’s wrong and paranoid?
but it beats the alternative, which is apparently more empty promises and taxes, followed by more entitlements, etc.
I seem to remember us having a rather large budget surplus in 2000.
McCullough is turning into the liberal Cleve.
So, Republicans want to eliminate SS and Medicare? Bullshit. Just plain bullshit. I’m so sick of this scare-tactic hyperbole. Does it make sense that the Republican president who wants to eliminate SS and medicare pushed a huge increased spending drug addition to the program?
As for the massive tax cuts driving us to a Brazilian tragedy - give me a friggen break. Take a look at the tax cuts as a percentage of the total federal budget over the next 10 years. sheesh.
Find an economist who doesn’t have such an obvious political axe to grind.
I’m burning my worthles ZOGBUX as we speak.
I didn’t say Bush himself wants to get rid of them; god only knows what he thinks. The hardcore movers and shakers, however, do. Grover Norquist - probably the most powerful person in the party short of Rove - does. Lots of people like him do. Scaife, Olin, Cato, AEI, and Coors do.
The tax cuts don’t fully phase in until 2010; they were designed that way to keep the ten year cost estimates down by phasing in the bulk of the cuts in year 10. Of course they aren’t that big of a deal right now; only 40% of the budget deficit is due to tax cuts. It’s out around 2015 where they really start to bite, dropping tax collections something like 2.5% of GDP.
To say that Republicans want to kill SS and Medicare is about in the same category as saying Democrats want to turn the U.S. into a completely socialist state. Its just one of those fear-mongering broad brush pieces of rhetoric that I’m so tired of.
I’ve got to look the numbers up, but it seems that when I looked this up on the GAO website a year or so ago the tax cuts amounted to something like, projected out 10-20 years, less than a percent of the total federal budget.
You got it.
http://www.cbpp.org/4-19-01tax.htm
2% of GDP, which is about 6% of the federal budget. About the same size as Reagan’s.
Jeff, it’s not fear-mongering or crazy to say that some Republicans - namely, the hardcore, who decide the nominations and run everything - want to eliminate the welfare state. They do, and they’ve said so. What do you think Norquist is talking about when he says he wants to shrink the government enough that he can “drown it in the bathtub?”
I know there’s Republicans, liberatarians and conservatives alike, who disagree. They’re just not running things, and they’re not stopping the people who are.