Rock and Roll PING! email Weegee to get on/off this list (or grab it yourself to PING the rest)
OH YEAH!
Yes, if the trust fund is ever depleted, then something will have to be done.
Uh, Krugman, in order to redeem the bonds in the trust fund, the government will have to raise taxes or borrow more money. What a weasel.
Well, imagine the absurdity of making government smaller. I'd like to go back to the days of silent Cal, Rolling Stone Magazine
These people are all such liars! Two workers for each retiree, around 2020, means much higher taxes and/or massive debt and/or millions of tax-paying immigrants - or the system simply crashes. They can do all the accounting finagles they want, but you can't get payroll taxes out of workers who weren't born.
Rock and Roll PING! email Weegee to get on/off this list (or grab it yourself to PING the rest)
OH YEAH!
Prior to Bush being president there are a bunch of Krugman quotes where he says that social security is a crisis.
Why didn't Rolling Stone front cover Kerry like they did Al Gore with the caption: "I got wood!"
My memory is not what it used to be, but I seem to recall that not too many years ago the lefties were throwing the word 'crisis' around in reference to Social Security the way they throw the word 'liar' around today.
Didn't they used to be a band?
/sarc
Rolling Stone may be useful as a commentator on music and related culture. But when it comes to commenting on the real world, Rolling Stone is also a fake, as witness this breathless article that takes Krugman as legitimate.
Did I miss anything?
Congressman Billybob
Yeah. Government is so effective, efficient, and frugal. This guy's head isn't in the sand, it's in a major orifice.
Help me please! This article was such a crock. I just about ripped it to shreds when I first read it. But I think the librarian would have had a fit.
At his tree-shaded home in Princeton, New Jersey, Krugman took a break from working on a new economics textbook to explain why the crisis is phony -- and what's wrong with Bush's plan "to convert Social Security into a giant 401(k)."
I recently watched a debate on PBS with Krugman vs. Dick Armey. Armey ripped Krugman a new one with the simple remark (paraphrased): "Paul, I bet you aren't relying on your SS for your retirement needs. In fact, I will bet that you have the majority of your retirement 401K' in the very stock market you deride as being too "risky" for the common man. Why can you invest in the stock market and regular people can't?" Krugman could only say "I have done very well." Then he dodged the question. "You've been sold a scare story. Right now Social Security has a large and growing trust fund -- a surplus that has been collected to pay for the surge in benefits we'll experience when the baby boomers start to retire. If you're twenty now, you'll be hitting retirement around 2052. That's the year the Congressional Budget Office says the trust fund will run out. In fact, many economists say it may never run out. If the economy continues to grow at an average rate, the trust fund could quite possibly last forever."
Armey pointed out to him that Johnson's Unified Budget put that "surplus" into the general fund. The only "surplus" is what rate the payroll tax will have to be increased to in the not so distant future. Of course it will last forever! It comes directly from worker's paychecks, not a suplus trust fund! Sounds a little like Clinton's "contributions" when speaking about taxes.
"Even if the trust fund does run out, Social Security will still be able to pay eighty percent of promised benefits. The actual shortfall would be a pretty small part of the federal budget, quite easily made up from other sources. Once the whole baby-boomer generation is into the retirement pool, Social Security's share of the gross domestic product will only increase by about two percent. Well, President Bush's tax cuts are more than two percent of GDP -- and they're happening right now, not fifty years from now. So the idea that there's this Social Security thing that is a huge problem is just wrong." Krugman shrugs off a 20% loss in benefits in the future as moderate and acceptable, yet simultaneously derides Bush's proposal to reduce benefits by actually giving (or letting the taxpayer keep) the money they earned to invest just like Krugman does. If "the shortfall would be a pretty small part of the federal budget, quite easily made up from other sources", why not use those "other sources" now, to fill the gap that Bush's plan puportedly will create?
Why does Krugman ignore the possibility that the average person could simple use a modified conventional or Roth IRA, or conservative municipal bond etc., and avoid the risk of investment in the stock market altogether. Even the average savings account would pay as much as you are likely to get from SS, and the money would remain YOURS, not the government's, to pass on if YOU pass on.
Krugman is a partisan ass in economist's clothing.
Aren't Paul Krugman's hands still shaking (and isn't he still subject to sudden, surprise bowel movement) after that debate he had with Bill O'R about 5 months back?
Word is that Bill cornered him in the locker room afterwards and took his lunch money.
This has to be the most colossally ignorant statement in the history of colossally ignorant statements. This guy claims to be an economist. Yet, he believes the way to control costs is to remove price from the consumer’s cost/benefit calculations when they make medical purchasing decisions. How does one ever get to a position of authority in economics without mastering the most basic and proven theorem, the relationship between supply and demand?
Hiring Krugman to teach economics is like hiring an illiterate junior high dropout to teach Shakespeare.
"The people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus
Uh, Mr. Weasel... your party, the Blubbas, et al, continue to this day to tell anyone who'll listen that the surplus was real, the money was in the bank until that nasty President Bush came along and give it to his rich buddies.
Right now Social Security has a large and growing trust fund -- a surplus that has been collected to pay for the surge in benefits we'll experience when the baby boomers start to retire.
Do you mean to imply that them nasty republicans aren't spending our SS like the dem congress did for years and years? Or did we find the keys to algore's lockbox?
It's been highly successful,
That would be why all those grandmas have to choose between dog food and their meds, correct?
The best way to contain those costs is to go to a single-payer system, one in which the government insures everyone.
Since you're so full of, uh, truth, why don't you tell readers just how wonderful government health care will be, tell us how we'll get unlimited care just like we do now, you lowlife scum sucking bugeyed bastard.
Somebody who has a subscription to this screed should ferret out the CLINTON STATEMENTS re SS and let these people have it. The President has already alluded to these statements by saying he was grateful for Clinton's comments about out fragile SS really is.
Paul Krugman: The Fake Economist
That's it, I've seen the light. Guess I really missed some things when I snoozed through economics back in school.
I'm starting my own retirement trust fund. Every month I'll just write a check to myself in the amount of $10K, and stick it in a box for use when I retire. What the heck, I want to live well, let's make it $30K.
BTTT