Consider:

90% of Bush voters think Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks

80% think Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction

40% think Saddam used those WMD on our troops when we invaded Iraq.

It’s a simple plan that works over and over. Bush lies, Rupert Murdoch(the guy who pays for Will’s screeds and Cato) passes the lies off as facts on Faux Noows, and the rich get richer.

In four short years, Bush & Co. have made America totally dependent on Saudi Arabia for oil and China for funding. Thank God we only have two years of this left. The Repubs will likely lose their majority in the House in 2006 because in their rush to get their habnds on the Social Security money, their true nature has become apparent to even their most lumpen supporters.

But this fact is being parlayed into describing the situation as a crisis that calls for immediate solution. Even the Post’s Weisman calls 2018 “a day of reckoning” when it’s no such thing. It’s merely the projected date when payroll tax revenues are exceeded by obligations. The system isn’t expected to run out of trust fund money until 2042 (according to the Social Security Administration) or 2052 (according to the Congressional Budget Office), and you can get even more varied estimates if you plug in different rates of growth.

Since it’s very hard to get something done politically based on projections about what might happen forty or fifty years in the future, proponents of Bush’s agenda want to ramp up the sense of urgency by saying the trust fund is a fiction and the real crisis point is 2018. If you accept the reality of the trust fund — which is to say, if you believe the Treasury securities held by the trust fund have roughly the value everyone thinks they have — then the day of reckoning doesn’t come until at least 2042.

For an illustration of the 2018/2042 dishonesty in action, here are a couple of paragraph’s from today’s Bush speech on the subject:

And that’s a problem. And that’s a problem because in the year 2018, in order to take care of baby boomers like me and — I don’t — and some others I see out there — the money going out is going to exceed the money coming in.

That’s not a good thing. It means that you’re either going to have to raise the taxes of people or reduce the benefits. And the longer you wait, the more severe the pain’s going to be to fulfill the promise for a younger generation of workers coming up.

On any reasonable reading, these two paragraphs tell a big untruth: that in 2018, when the money going out exceeds the money coming in, the government will have to either raise payroll taxes or reduce benefits. If the SSTF is real, the government will have to do no such thing, because it will be able to start sending those little slips of paper back down the vacuum tubes to Treasury and getting little coins in return.

As to whether Social Security is sustainable past 2042 or 2052 or whenever, that’s another argument. But this 2018 thing is pure bullshit.

So, I suppose if the SSTF was held in cash, then all of you would be arguing the exact same thing.

The question of worth comes down to: What is someone willing to pay for the item? If the SSTF managers decided to sell all the treasury bonds they have on the open market right now, and buy gold bullion (or perhaps oil?) instead, how much would they end up with? That’s the current value of the SSTF. Of course, that value could change over time, if people were more or less likely to buy the treasury bonds.

It’s called a market.

Splendid.

Consider a counterexample. If your parents own a Treasury bond, then yes that is a future asset to you (as your parents’ beneficiary).

But a mountain of IOUs exchanged between your mother and your father are not going to make your future inheritance any bigger.

Stated yet another way, putting coins in your piggy bank means something. Putting handwritten IOUs promising to pay yourself in the future means nothing.

The SSTF is exactly like that — just empty accounting entries exchanged between two parts of the federal government, backed by absolutely nothing.

Vladimir and Estragon Explain Social Security Reform

Maybe, on second look, this is just a restatement of what you said. If so, ignore.

I think the Repugs would do better on SS reform if they seperated the obvious attempt to loot SS in the form of private accounts, from true attempts to fix it by recalculating the formulas.

Though all this debate seems to be be moot. The Repugs seem to have stepped on their dorks coming out of the starting gate on this issue.

I look forward to all the Repugs battling AARP in the coming months. Who’s gonna win Florida in 2008? Hehe.

I liked this illustration from Rich Tucker the other day.

I liked this illustration from Rich Tucker the other day.

I think the Repugs would do better on SS reform if they seperated the obvious attempt to loot SS in the form of private accounts, from true attempts to fix it by recalculating the formulas.

Though all this debate seems to be be moot. The Repugs seem to have stepped on their dorks coming out of the starting gate on this issue.

I look forward to all the Repugs battling AARP in the coming months. Who’s gonna win Florida in 2008? Hehe.

Maybe, on second look, this is just a restatement of what you said. If so, ignore.

Splendid.

Consider a counterexample. If your parents own a Treasury bond, then yes that is a future asset to you (as your parents’ beneficiary).

But a mountain of IOUs exchanged between your mother and your father are not going to make your future inheritance any bigger.

Stated yet another way, putting coins in your piggy bank means something. Putting handwritten IOUs promising to pay yourself in the future means nothing.

The SSTF is exactly like that — just empty accounting entries exchanged between two parts of the federal government, backed by absolutely nothing.

Vladimir and Estragon Explain Social Security Reform

So, I suppose if the SSTF was held in cash, then all of you would be arguing the exact same thing.

The question of worth comes down to: What is someone willing to pay for the item? If the SSTF managers decided to sell all the treasury bonds they have on the open market right now, and buy gold bullion (or perhaps oil?) instead, how much would they end up with? That’s the current value of the SSTF. Of course, that value could change over time, if people were more or less likely to buy the treasury bonds.

It’s called a market.

But this fact is being parlayed into describing the situation as a crisis that calls for immediate solution. Even the Post’s Weisman calls 2018 “a day of reckoning” when it’s no such thing. It’s merely the projected date when payroll tax revenues are exceeded by obligations. The system isn’t expected to run out of trust fund money until 2042 (according to the Social Security Administration) or 2052 (according to the Congressional Budget Office), and you can get even more varied estimates if you plug in different rates of growth.

Since it’s very hard to get something done politically based on projections about what might happen forty or fifty years in the future, proponents of Bush’s agenda want to ramp up the sense of urgency by saying the trust fund is a fiction and the real crisis point is 2018. If you accept the reality of the trust fund — which is to say, if you believe the Treasury securities held by the trust fund have roughly the value everyone thinks they have — then the day of reckoning doesn’t come until at least 2042.

For an illustration of the 2018/2042 dishonesty in action, here are a couple of paragraph’s from today’s Bush speech on the subject:

And that’s a problem. And that’s a problem because in the year 2018, in order to take care of baby boomers like me and — I don’t — and some others I see out there — the money going out is going to exceed the money coming in.

That’s not a good thing. It means that you’re either going to have to raise the taxes of people or reduce the benefits. And the longer you wait, the more severe the pain’s going to be to fulfill the promise for a younger generation of workers coming up.

On any reasonable reading, these two paragraphs tell a big untruth: that in 2018, when the money going out exceeds the money coming in, the government will have to either raise payroll taxes or reduce benefits. If the SSTF is real, the government will have to do no such thing, because it will be able to start sending those little slips of paper back down the vacuum tubes to Treasury and getting little coins in return.

As to whether Social Security is sustainable past 2042 or 2052 or whenever, that’s another argument. But this 2018 thing is pure bullshit.