I was shocked to note that Paul Krugman was trying to argue that Social Security has no problems in his latest article. One would think that Krugman, being a trained economist, would know better than to make an argument that’s so completely ridiculous as to be near insanity…
…then I remembered it’s Paul Krugman we’re talking about.
Krugman argues that the Social Security crisis is somehow part of some Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Yet the bipartisan Trustee’s Report on Medicare and Social Security noted that current Social Security liabilities are $25 trillion over the ability of the system to pay. Inevitably, by 2018 the Social Security trust fund will be running deficits, and by 2042, the system will be insolvent. This is not some right-wing conspiracy, these are the government’s own numbers – and they match what Alan Greenspan and earlier Clinton Administration officials have said.
For example, economist Alan Schick of the center-left Brookings Institution predicted that Medicare oulays will soar from $600 billion to nearly $4 trillion, and by 2050 spending on Social Security and Medicare will subsume 80% of the federal budget. (Alan Schick, The Federal Budget: Politics, Policy, and Process, Washington: The Brookings Institution. 2000. p. 274). Last time I checked Schick was hardly member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
Krugman has abandoned any semblance of rational thought to a vicious partisanship. As Donald Luskin notes, Krugman himself had warned against the coming Social Security crisis, and since then the demographics and the economics of the system have only gotten worse.
Krugman is either being A:) incredibly ignorant or is B:) lying through his teeth. Being that Krugman isn’t a complete idiot, the only possible explanation is B. Krugman could be the poster child for BDS, which shows just how debilitating the disease is on one’s faculties.
