Krugman: The Iceberg Cometh

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/opinion/11krugman.html?hp=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=

Last week someone leaked a memo written by Peter Wehner, an aide to Karl Rove, about how to sell Social Security privatization. The public, says Mr. Wehner, must be convinced that "the current system is heading for an iceberg."

It's the standard Bush administration tactic: invent a fake crisis to bully people into doing what you want. "For the first time in six decades," the memo says, "the Social Security battle is one we can win." One thing I haven't seen pointed out, however, is the extent to which the White House expects the public and the media to believe two contradictory things.

The administration expects us to believe that drastic change is needed, and needed right away, because of the looming cost of paying for the baby boomers' retirement.

The administration expects us not to notice, however, that the supposed solution would do nothing to reduce that cost. Even with the most favorable assumptions, the benefits of privatization wouldn't kick in until most of the baby boomers were long gone. For the next 45 years, privatization would cost much more money than it saved.

<snip>

There's an iceberg in front of us, all right. And Mr. Bush wants us to steam right into it, full speed ahead.

[Cha]

1. Wasn't there something "leaked" when

rove was trying to sell the war on Iraq, too?

You know these gullibles here..if you tell them the sky is falling then by God ..the sky IS falling!

[optional]

2. SSI as "retirement"

I posted the following on MMFA's website earlier -- I think it's an important part of the Republican pitch for privatization:
Although The New York Times published an editorial opposed to privatizing SSI on today's OpEd page (For the Record on Social Security, January 10, 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/10/opinion/10mon1.html?oref=login)), the article it published on the subject today continued to mischaracterize the program in a way that is consistent with the Republican administration's strategy for selling private investment accounts for younger workers' retirement.
The opening paragraph of Edmund Andrews' <i>As White House Begins Social Security Push, Critics Claim Exaggeration </i> (<b>NYT</b>, January 10, 2005 (<li>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/10/politics/10social.html</li>)) reads,
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 - In the first phase of a strategy to build support for overhauling Social Security, White House officials are planning to describe <i>the retirement program</i> as a system in "crisis" whose promises to younger workers are a 'fiction.' (my italics added for emphasis)
Although pensions are one of the most widespread benefits of SSI and SSD, these are not the only function of this <i>social insurance program</i>. Rather, as pointed out in Michael Laracy's OpEd piece in Saturday, January 8, 2005's <b>NYT</b>, (<i>Women and Children First</i> (<li>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/opinion/08laracy.html</li>)), this social insurance program also pays survivor benefits to widows and orphans. In addition, SSD compensates workers who are disabled and unable to continue to earn a living. As social security provides for these beneficiaries, it is not a "retirement program," but a social insurance program.
Restating part of Laracy's argument (<i>Women and Children First </i>(<li>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/opinion/08laracy.html</li>)), neither of these groups of beneficiaries are likely to gain from the privatization of the program. On the contrary, both are likely to lose as the income that they will get from the private accounts which they must tap before their maturity at the worker's anticipated retirement will not offer them the means to support themselves.
The spin, then, comes with leaving these groups out of the debate in the way the program is described. As long as the loss that survivors and the disabled must suffer through privatization is left out (as it is when SSI is described as a "retirement program"), the conversion of social insurance into a program almost wholly targeted at retirement can be portrayed as an equitable change. When the change in these dependents' likely benefits is included, however, it loses what rosy hues it may garnish from slogans about "ownership" and "individual responsibility," and leaves a proposal that deprives widows, cripples and orphans.

[RobertSeattle]

3. Bush Political Strategry 101

1. Create a phony crisis, masking the real right wing agenda.

2. Through your administration officials and talking heads, get the public to perceive the phony crisis as a crisis

3 Propose a equally phony solution, not solving any real crisis, just achieving the hidden Administration agenda.

4. Through your administration officials and talking heads, market the solution and denounce and villify anyone who disagrees as partisan, immoral, un-American, and/or unpatriotic.

5. Execute the solution using exceedingly loyal, regardless of competency, partisans.

6. Regardless of the results, declare the solution a success. Never admit any mistakes.

7. If the facts overwhelm #6, blame Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and/or Democrats in general. Never take responsibility for anything negative.

[Skink]

4. Political Strategy Advanced Course...

Learn to always be the victim.

[BadGimp]

5. Remember Rove's PowerPoint slides?

They laid out exactly how the administration was going to sell the War? A CD ROM containing the PowerPoint file was found conveniently on a street corner in DC. A leak? I doubt it.

Now we have a "leak" that outlines how the same administration plans to sell another war (the conservative GOP war on government social programs), same MO, and I bet the same outcome.

I hate it that I can see all this so clearly. I especially hate that the big corporate media shills are compliant to the point of being subservant.

WASP

[Bouncy Ball]

6. Wow, great editorial.

Um, very very chilling.

In 2050, I'll be in my 80s and my parents, who are baby boomers will be DECEASED.

Sheesh.

bush and his cronies are either the MOST retarded, stupidest people to ever run a government or they are the MOST evil, or BOTH.

I fear it is both.

[Wells]

7. American democracy is in shambles.

The Bush Dynasty was complicit in the rise of Nazi Germany; Sam Bush directed small arms to Hitler's brownshirts in the 1920's, Prescott Bush provided covert financial services to the German industries that built Hitler's war machine in the 1930's.

Less known is the Bush's prominent membership in the American Eugenics Society, (race clensing), whose tenets formed the basis for Hitler's philosophy of Aryan Supremacy.

Thus as a practicing Eugecist, the duty George HW Bush preferred during WWII was bomber pilot. Not surprising that George HW slavered for nuclear bombing of Vietnam. Son George adhered to the family philosophy by training to become a jet fighter pilot.

The Bush Dynasty has little understanding, appreciation and compassion for common people, laborers, servants, canon fodder. The ruling class have run out of fresh ideas for the common people to be sustained, and once again resort to destruction. American democracy is in shambles.

[donheld]

8. This itself is TERRORISM

We may as well call it as it is.

[Strelnikov_]

9. "There's an iceberg in front of us, all right. And Mr. Bush

. . wants us to steam right into it, full speed ahead."

Yep, the Joe Hazelwood of presidents.

[BBradley]

10. The thing I don't understand about all this

The Bush Administration has shown, and if I'm not mistaken, flat out said that they have no problem with running a deficit. So this leads to the question: Why does it matter to them in regards to social security?