Cooper Angers Vegetarians
Via Kleinheider, Jim Cooper seeks to implement dietary guidelines in the US Budget:
Cooper, a longtime Obama supporter, said he discussed his commission idea with the Illinois senator after a campaign event earlier this year. He wouldn’t describe Obama’s response, but he did issue a stark challenge for his party — which could include the next president of the United States — about the tough choices ahead.
“At some point, you have to govern,” Cooper said. “We can’t keep on promising candy to everyone. To have a balanced diet, you also have to have meat, vegetables and fruit.”
I know the Lakoff wing of the Democratic party thinks its a mistake to approach issues like social security as if it were a crisis, but there are fundamental flaws in the system that need to be addressed sooner rather than later, due in large part to the baby boomers who are going to be retiring earlier and living longer in greater numbers than in previous generations. Tough choices will need to be made, and personally I'm willing to see my retirement age raised if it means making the system more structurally sound.
15 comments:
Sean, you keep making the same misstatements about Social Security and I am going to keep calling you out about them. Just Google "Paul Krugman + social Security" and his columns will show you that a small tweak is needed at best.
Stop trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater...
Paul Krugman lost all credibility with me...any other examples?
Left Wing Cracker - does the small tweak take into account all of the IOUs the federal government owes SS? I understand that theoretically a huge SS surplus was building up to pay for the future benifits, but both parties have raided this fund and spent it on other government projects. Where will this money come from when it is required to make actual SS payments?
And is anyone suprised that the government spent a pile of money that it was supposed to be saving? Why do we trust the government with our money in the first place?
Any other examples?
Alan Greenspan on MTP not that long ago.
The surplus is supposed to disappear (that was the point). Reagan's compromise actyually worked. Each year the truistees push the actuarial soundness further and further into the future. By the time we retire, Sean, the population will not be top-heavy so pay-as-you go (which is how it was when it began) will actually be quite fine.
Besides, if you say its a "crisis" then the burden should be on you to substantiate that claim. Find an economist (and blue dog coop doesn't count) worth a darn who actually says there is a "crisis" (and then find one who doesn't have skin in the game in terms of transaction costs for all the privatization schemes that are sitting there just teasing wall street).
Medicare is bleeding and bleeding soon. Social Security is actuarily sound for a quite some time. And Jim, regardless of the IOUs (I bet you laughed at Gore's lockbox at the time), that money goes to SS period even if it bankrupts the rest of the gov't . . . oh wait . . . the rest of the gov't is already bankrupt . . . nevermind.
Oh c'mon Sean . . . vegetarians Lakoff wing?
And if you don't like Krugman's political insights (which I have not enjoyed much of late either), tis fallacy to judge his economics on this.
He is 100% on point and actually discusses it in a quite accessible way, so you can judge for your self rather than summarily dismissing his economic wisdom based on his politics.
I mean, I still think highly of your insights even though you actually give credence to Cooper's silliness more than I would : )
Sean,
Last fall the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus pointed out that Krugman's position on Social Security has changed considerable. See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/20/AR2007112001651.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
Perhaps the lure of being Secretary of the Treasury under President Hillary Clinton caused him to forget his earlier writings.
Mark Rogers
Check out Brad DeLong's and Mark Thoma's (both actual ECONOMICS PROFESSORS) thorough trashing of this article, herbert:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/11/jeebus-preserve.html and http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/11/ruth-marcus-tri.html
Here's DeLong:
"Is America's Social Security system now in a long-run funding crisis? The answer to this question is "no." It's more likely than not that Social Security revenues will have to be raised a bit or benefits cut a bit relative to current law or both in the next fifty years, and almost certain that one or the other or both will have to be done in the next century. But it is a long-run problem, not a crisis. And it is--relative to the scale of other things that have gone wrong--not a large long-run problem.
Back in the 1990s was there good reason to think that America's Social Security system was in a long-run funding crisis? No: back then we did have a more pessimistic view of what long-run productivity growth was likely to be, and thus the long-run Social Security shortfalls made themselves visible more quickly and were larger in magnitude, but it was still a problem--not a crisis.
Is America's entire budget--Social Security plus Medicare plus Medicaid plus defense plus all other spending plus the Bush tax cuts--in crisis? Yes.
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post demonstrates that she has not taken the time to think issues through enough to grasp these three points, and so makes a fool of herself. It raises once again the question of why they bother to print the Washington Post each day, and makes me ask once again why oh why can't we have a better press corps?"
Nice try though
Mr. Berg,
I linked to the WP article not because of its view of the status of Social Security but because it presents the spectacle of Krugman vs Krugman. Granted that it lacks Kramer vs Kramer's young Meryl Streep, but Krugman vs Krugman is an amusing tale on its merits.
Perhaps you can detect a consistency that seems lacking in his rather divergent positions, which is Ms. Marcus' point.
A reasonable guess is that the new Krugman was using the issue of Social Security to attack Senator Obama on behalf of Senator Clinton. After all, Senator Obama was talking about Social Security reform because it is an issue of profound interest (in more than one sense) to his younger constituency.
Before you site Krugman, it would help to distinguish which Krugman you mean.
"Nice try though"
Thoughtful of you to say so. To paraphrase Richard Blaine:
"We all try. I succeed."
Did you read the links I cited? They pick apart Marcus' thoughtless attempt at a "gotcha" [and with it yours] on the specific point at which you claim to hang your hat. From Thoma:
"Not much of an argument - all it does for the most part is compare quotes from Krugman then and now without putting them in context (and leaving out a whole bunch of other quotes between 2001 and now). Even if there weren't an obvious context to Krugman's prior remarks, what if he had changed his mind as the evidence became clearer. What's wrong with that?"
Good job with googles though.
Keep at it.
Mr. Berg,
Much like Krugman's economic theories, the first link didn't work. The second was hardly a silver bullet. One academic economist defending another on a complex subject is hardly definitive.
The point I took from the Marcus piece was the hint that Krugman's Damascine conversion might owe more to his desire to hurt Senator Obama than a real shift in his view on Social Security.
At the time of this exchange, Clinton supporters were waving Krugman columns like they were green kryptonite. You may well disagree with Senator Obama's position, but there are no small number of economists who would agree with him. One assumes that his position was actually shaped by "actual Economics Professors."
Now that his job at Treasury seems less likely (and another Enron gig seems improbable), it will be interesting to see if Krugman embraces Senator Obama's plan for Social Security. Bets anyone?
herbert:
I agree that Krugman POLITICS took a clearly Clinton-specific tract during the primary season, but I have seen nothing but consistency over time in his understanding and very accessible description of the Social Security program.
I find it intellectually lazy to mind-read in to people's motives as a substitute for analysis of the substance of their arguments especially when the arguments are accessible and there for everyone to see. There are many reasons that this is just silly as well as logically fallacilous (projection of one's own state-of-mind being the obvious). Another of which is exemplified by the state of this discussion, which (despite my admitted snarkiness for which I apologize for its contentiousness) has the potential for honest-to-god substantive relavence but has now devolved in to a back-and-forth on Krugman. Thoughy perhaps worthy of a discussion on its own merits, Krugman is not at issue. What is at issue the claim that the social security program - which is MORE actuarily sound than the general budget or Medicare - is in crisis. I claim it is not, and I make that claim without the need to necessarily defer all authority to economists such as Krugman for this is a matter well within all of our grasp.
I - like LWC I suspect - would merely refer anyone to Krugman as he has been one of the most articulate and accessible writers on the subject. I do not find any value in discussing HIM further.
Try this again for the first link but really it is Thoma that dismantle's Marcus' sloppy "journalimalism":
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/11/jeebus-preserve.html
Mr. Berg,
"I find it intellectually lazy to mind-read in to people's motives as a substitute for analysis of the substance of their arguments especially when the arguments are accessible and there for everyone to see."
The problem is that economics is not a hard science like chemistry for example. Economists are not bound to weigh the relationship of factors like unemployment and inflation and oil prices in the same way that chemists can follow the balancing of x amount of sodium and y amount of potassium and z amount of chlorine.
As such, the assumptions and motives of economists are important. The very nature of economic analysis is shaped by the teology of particular economists. Libertarian economists, for example, tend to see some vision of Freedom as the prime goal while socialist economists tend to see some form of Equality as the prime goal.
Regarding Social Security, your argument makes my point. Consider your observation:
"What is at issue the claim that the social security program - which is MORE actuarily sound than the general budget or Medicare - is in crisis. I claim it is not, and I make that claim without the need to necessarily defer all authority to economists such as Krugman for this is a matter well within all of our grasp."
But isn't is possible that the majority of economists who agree with this position are shaped by a belief in the special position of Social Security? Since there are large numbers of economists who disagree and who have data and analyses to prove their points, it seems that looking at the larger views of each side makes sense.
Particularly when a particular figure links his economic analysis to the championing of a specific candidate.
Now you are getting in to a strange post-modern "there is no truuth" zone.
Here is the deal. Under the EXACT same measure of actuarial soundness, the SS program is the most actuarily (sp?) sound (vs. the general budget or medicare).
Now, perhaps these measures contain a pervaisve social-security-centric method of accounting that predisposes it to bias that program, but if you actually examine the metrics used it is very very conservative (using very conservative measures of growth etc) and consistently ends up being revised upward. So what you have that under the same metric across time or the same metric across programs, this one stands up better than the rest.
I will refrain from chasing you down this rabbit hole any further. You are ending up in la-la land. I understand your point your point about motives, but if you tell me the sky is red and Sean says it is blue, I don't need to mind-read to agree with Sean.
Here is my question: have you examined the trustees most recent report on the Social Security program? If so, do you feel they are being unduly optimistic? This is how we ignore this mind-reading altogether. I have looked at it, and I will admit that it is some dense stuff for a non-economist (I don't have the cite . . . apologies) but the summary is decently accessible and I could tell you my opinion but you can already guess. Now, seeing as I am not an economist (a) you may question my wisdom; but (b) I hope you would not waste your time looking in to my "motives" (unless you are just hell bent on bweing "right" at all costs in which case I wish you the best).
"Now you are getting in to a strange post-modern "there is no truuth" zone."
Not at all. But the very shift in Krugman's position suggests that there are limits to the accuracy of such projections.
"Under the EXACT same measure of actuarial soundness, the SS program is the most actuarily (sp?) sound (vs. the general budget or medicare)."
But each is highly vulnerable to change based on external factors.
I don't question your motives because, to the best of my knowledge, you did not shift your position and start attacking one liberal candidate to the benefit of another. Given the wide range of attacks by Krugman on Senator Obama, your unwillingness to admit the possibility that he was playing politics seems to be charitable.
OK . . . I am glad it seems we are on a little more sane ground.
Look . . . my point is that Krugman's views on Social Security have evolved with the available data regardless of the political landscape. Might he subconsciously slant his views in accord with the political climate? Sure. But this predates the recent season and completely accords with many other eceonomists AND what my own eyes tell me.
Besides to acknowledge the possibility of the improbable is one thing, but you are teetering close to discounting his views on the NBA playoffs due to his political leanings. Jumping to motive when there is obvious unassailable substance to work with is folly. A classic example: everyone gave Hillary sh*t for wearing that Yankees hat. As she explained, she had always liked the Yankees as her AL team and as a Cubs fan, you needed something else. I am a Cub fan by birth (parents went to a Cubs game while on their honeymoon). I also became a Yankees fan early in life though I never lost love of my Cubbies. My reason was also because I needed an AL team but also because of Donnie Basebal [Mattingly] who lived near my aunt and uncle. The press dismissed her explanation even though she had said the same thing WHILE STILL IN THE WHITE HOUSE and it was corroborated by previous biographies etc. Hell the Post dismissed her explanation as opportunitic nonsense even though the same paper had two years earlier written of that same explanation. While seemingly trivial and unrelated to the topic at hand, it just goes to show how fixation on perceived [or projected] motive often causes people to ignore good obvious facts smacking them in the face.
In this case, the topic is social security NOT Krugman so about that report?
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