Politics: numbers do matter

[redbird]

Paul Krugman points out that the advocates of Social Security privatization are lying. Not just mistaken, lying. They know their numbers don't and can't work:

Which brings us to the privatizers' Catch-22.

They can rescue their happy vision for stock returns by claiming that the Social Security actuaries are vastly underestimating future economic growth. But in that case, we don't need to worry about Social Security's future: if the economy grows fast enough to generate a rate of return that makes privatization work, it will also yield a bonanza of payroll tax revenue that will keep the current system sound for generations to come.

Alternatively, privatizers can unhappily admit that future stock returns will be much lower than they have been claiming. But without those high returns, the arithmetic of their schemes collapses.

It really is that stark: any growth projection that would permit the stock returns the privatizers need to make their schemes work would put Social Security solidly in the black.

Comments

[volund.livejournal.com]

It's not news that the privatizers' arithmetic simply does not work. I expect his friend Dean Baker's challenge will not be taken up.

This administration's aim, which they will never explicitly admit, is the dismantling of as much of the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society as possible. Period.

And if it takes the Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt created by the one of the biggest Big Lies to be perpetrated so far in this new century to do it, so be it. They have no shame.