Krugman: Bush's plan to sell Soc. Sec. privatization - salemanship

[Dover]

January 18, 2005
By PAUL KRUGMAN

President Bush's plan to sell Social Security privatization
looks remarkably like the way he sold the Iraq war.

That Magic Moment
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 18, 2005

A charming man courts a woman, telling her that he's a wealthy independent businessman. Just after the wedding, however, she learns that he has been cooking the books, several employees have accused him of sexual harassment and his company is about to file for bankruptcy. She accuses him of deception. "The accountability moment is behind us," he replies.

Last week President Bush declared that the election was the "accountability moment" for the war in Iraq - the voters saw it his way, and that's that. But Mr. Bush didn't level with the voters during the campaign and doesn't deserve anyone's future trust.

I won't belabor the W.M.D. issue, except to point out that the Bush administration, without exactly lying, managed to keep most voters confused. According to a Pew poll, on the eve of the election the great majority of voters, of both parties, believed that the Bush administration had asserted that it found either W.M.D. or an active W.M.D. program in Iraq.

Mr. Bush also systematically misrepresented how the war was going. Remember last September when Ayad Allawi came to Washington? Mr. Allawi, acting as a de facto member of the Bush campaign - a former official close to the campaign suggested phrases and helped him rehearse his speech to Congress - declared that 14 or 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces were "completely safe," and that the interim government had 100,000 trained troops. None of it was true.

Now that the election is over, we learn that the search for W.M.D. has been abandoned. Meanwhile, military officials have admitted that even as Mr. Bush kept asserting that we were making "good progress," the insurgency was growing in numbers and effectiveness, that the Army Reserve is "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force," and oh, by the way, we'll need to spend at least another $100 billion to pay for war expenses and replace damaged equipment. But the accountability moment, says Mr. Bush, is behind us.

Maybe we can't hold Mr. Bush directly to account for misleading the public about Iraq. But Mr. Bush still has a domestic agenda, for which the lessons of Iraq are totally relevant...cont'd


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/opinion/18krugman.html?ex=1107072915&ei=1&en=3f160ae0bbbdabd7

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[Dover]

2. You still around?

..

[papau]

3. Yes they did say "crisis" - and Clinton endorsed "higher yield" as the

solution - meaning investing Trust assets in equities rather than gov bonds.

And in 99 Clinton asked for "private accounts" - but they were voluntary, additional payroll deduction funded, accounts. And the gov administered all assets - and gave a tax deduction and there was to me a small match - just like your 401k.

Total cost was $500 billion of the Surplus.

But of course the Surplus - which was made up 98% Soc Sec surplus, and about zero FIT surplus - was given the rich via the tax cut for the rich.

What Krugman, Broder, and others all wrote about Social Security's crisis 35 years down the road was true then and remains true today.

Namely that the intermediate projection (the own that uses the low 1.6% GDP growth and says Trust Fund Assets run out in 2043 at which time we can pay only 73% of what is currently in the law) requires a change in an assumption if it is to be solid for the full 75 years of the projection. And ideas like Moving the Reagan age 67 Retirement age to 68, or 70 - and using wage index minus 1% - and increasing the wage cap - and increasing the tax in the future - were all discussed.

NO ONE IS GOING TO BE HAM STRUNG BY WHAT THEY SAID BACK THEN UNLESS THE MEDIA LIES -

Now, can we trust our media to tell the truth?

And if not, why does it matter what they said back in 97-98 since the media would lie about it anyway?

[patdem]

4. Locking, this is a dupe

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