DISQUS

Do you think the speech writers are doing it on purpose? Putting in readily debunkably anecdotes, pie in the sky policies and laborious jokes to see just how stupid the man is.


I reckon they've been doing it for more than a decade and still haven't been found out.

If only fatty Soames had landed his punch too.

Did David Abrahams get his money back?

So Meachy Meacher wasn't the only MP with a property portfolio.


I guess that's why they were so keen to keep house prices inflated.

Maybe he's born with it.


(Is the Scotchman with the broken calculator wearing makeup again?)



Il Pontif: I had all my money in Iceland you shit. You're not getting out of here alive.

it is gay

i love synchronicity especially when one is inspired from philosophy and the other evolutionary psychology:) see you in new orleans.

Oh lord, you've strated writing already. better get going myself:) see you there.

just gets better and sharper guys.

Just to pile on a bit, your argument, if it is one, is really for fatalism, not for a classically liberal concept of justice. Was Richard II "lucky" to be born heir to the English throne? If he hadn't been heir to the English throne, he wouldn't have been Richard II. He wouldn't even have been Prince Richard-who-if-he-survives-his-male-relatives-with-a-closer-link-in-accordance-with-the-rules-of-primogeniture-will-be-King. And there is no other kind of Prince Richard he could be.

Similarly, Baldrick-the-toothless-serf wasn't "unlucky" to be born attached to the land and forced to work for a snotty Norman aristocrat because if he hadn't been born a serf, he wouldn't have been Baldrick.

But Kripke isn't going to justify this situation. You are going to need Karma or Jehovah to help out. Because it still could be unjust that anyone is a king or a serf, even if the people in the kingless, serfless utopia would, in a real sense, be different people from the actual people of feudal England.

Nicholas,

The point is that Cato has been a party to this dishonest crisis talk. If Cato just said, "we're libertarians and we hate all government programs, including Social Security", that would be honest, although doubtless politically ineffective.

My own perspective is that classes can, and do, make deals. Every stable economy in the world depends on such a deal. The fact that your ideology precludes these deals is a problem with your ideology, not with the deal.

Anton:

The deal is the trust fund. In other words, there was no way that payroll taxes were going up except as a "fix" for Social Security's "solvency." That implies not treating the government as a black box.

You say other taxes and spending changed because of the 1983 deal. You may be right, and that may go to the merits of the deal. But it doesn't prove that the deal didn't happen (that the trust fund "does not exist").

Anton,

If it wasn't for the "accounting gimmick", payroll taxes would be lower, and the amount of money the US Government would have to borrow from other sources would be greater (at the same levels of taxes and spending).

From a left-wing point of view, there would be a benefit to just funding SS pay-as-you-go. But the Democrats agreed to give that up back in 1983. The outrageous part is that the Republicans are now reneging on the deal (really, they reneged with the BushII tax cuts).

Anton:

But the debt owed by the general fund to the Social Security fund reduces the need of the general fund (at a given level of other taxes and other expenditures) to borrow now from the market. So it does improve the ability of the government to pay for Social Security in the future because there will be less debt to persons other than the trust fund.

The 1983 deal was a scam only because the Republican side acted in bad faith. They made no effort to keep the general fund in balance. So, in a sense, I agree with you. However, the villain here is Republican free lunchism, not the idea of the 1983 deal.

Anton's position is consistent, but it isn't the only possible one.

If there is no trust fund, that social security contributions are just another tax, and social security benefits are just another government program, and the only solvency issue is with the government as a whole.

If the problem is the government as a whole, then the problem is Bushian fiscal policy, and Krauthammer is a dishonest hack. But we knew that.

But there is another way of looking at things.

The reality of the trust fund, like the reality of legal tender and property in land, is not independent of our belief in its reality. But the trust fund was a useful way to allow for a class compromise in 1983 that was win-win. However, one party to the compromise has since 2000 reneged on it, and is using the payroll tax to subsidize high-income tax cuts.

They think they can get away with this because the working class in America has a long-remarked upon history of racial and cultural division. However, Social Security is really so essential to the feeble excuse for a social democratic coalition that America has that Bush's latest feint may actually force everyone to get together long enought to kick Cato and Rove's collective backsides. Rove will, of course, sell you out at the earliest opportunity. He likes business, but libertarian smart alecks really get on his nerves.

But Rob, isn't that persuasive definition. People argue that the US or Italy or France isn't truly democratic today, what with hanging chads and Presidents narrowly avoiding criminal prosecution. If we don't have a definition of democracy (came to power in a competitive election, and could be removed in one), then it is a bit like a "Christian Peace Theory" that rules out intra-Christian wars by saying that, clearly, at least one of the parties wasn't really Christian.

Nicholas,

I don't think a clear majority of society can't be mistaken about anything. A clear majority of society can be mistaken about the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs, or how many moons Pluto has. But there are a class of things about which a society can't be mistaken because if a clear majority believe it to be true, it is true.

An example is that treason (defined as opposition to the effective state authority) can never prosper becuase if it prosper, it isn't treason (because the previous state authority turned out not to be effective).

So, Americans could not, coherently, be mistaken that the dollar is legal tender. An individual could be mistaken (or deluded) that the piece of paper he had in his pocket was legal tender, but a clear majority could not.

It isn't incoherent to bemoan the fact that Americans view Social Security benefits as property rights. It is incoherent to say that the problem with Social Security benefits is that they aren't property rights, even though everyone (or almost everyone) thinks they are. That's like saying that the problem with fiat money is that it doesn't work as a medium of exchange, even when everything thinks it does (and acts on this belief). That's what I took Will to be arguing.

When [Jefferson's] visage appears on Cato's promotional material, as it so often does, I try to stay positive.

Leaving Jefferson aside, what's up with naming yourself after Cato? I mean, the Elder was an obsessive adovcate of genocide and the younger was a prig. Did one of them advocate deregulating the Antioch slave futures market or something?

Thanks for the tip. One more for the "to read" list.

By "three", I mean four. Of course. A=A-1.

BTW, you need to respond to the point made by the numerate members of the liberal blogosphere: the whole calculator is based on 4% *real* annual salary growth. See Atrios.

Will,

You identify a real issue, but it isn't that the system is Pay-As-You-Go.

Let's suppose I am a trustee for my nephew's college fund. The fund has a surplus. As trustee, I choose to lend the money to myself to deal with a cash-flow problem in my business.

Now, what I am doing is ethically and legally problematic, to say the least. However, a genuine transaction takes place. I lend "myself" money, but the money I lend is in trust. So, it is correct to say that the college fund has an asset (a debt owed by me). The value of this asset depends, in part, on my solvency, but if I have the credit rating of the US Government, then that value is pretty high.

What Bush is doing is the equivalent of my saying, in the example, that since the debt I owe to "myself" (qua trustee) is fictitious, my nephew's college fund is really broke, and he is going to have to make do with a three month TV repair course. I would be repudiating the debt I (in my own interest) owe myself (as trustee for someone else).

The same analysis would apply to a company pension plan that owned company bonds. The company cannot just say "we owe them to ourselves" and then lawfully repudiate the claim of the pension fund on the general revenues of the company.

In effect, Bush is trying to reconcile his LBJ-style spending with his Coolidge-style taxation by repudiating a substantial portion of the US debt. I don't understand why it is a libertarian position to support the federal government repudiating its obligations.

No, Pay-as-you-go means that current receipts are determined by current outlays. That is not the case for Social Security.

ALL defined benefit plans, however well-funded, might someday require increased contributions to meet promised benefits. That does not make them pay-as-you-go. Even plans with a deficit are not pay-as-you-go if they have any built-up assets at all.

If the trust fund's ownership of US Government Bonds is fictitious, why isn't the Chinese Central Bank's?

The problem is that the Right hasn't updated its talking points on social security since Goldwater. This forces it into the ridiculous position of arguing that US government bonds aren't real financial assets.