What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
Paul Krugman was definitely telling the truth back in 1996, when he wrote the following:
ReplyDelete"Social Security is structured from the point of view of the recipients as if it were an ordinary retirement plan: what you get out depends on what you put in. So it does not look like a redistributionist scheme. In practice it has turned out to be strongly redistributionist, but only because of its Ponzi game aspect, in which each generation takes more out than it put in. Well, the Ponzi game will soon be over, thanks to changing demographics, so that the typical recipient henceforth will get only about as much as he or she put in (and today's young may well get less than they put in)." [Emphasis added]
Source: Krugman, Paul R. "What Consensus?" Boston Review, December 1996/January 1997. (It's in the fifth paragraph).
I guess that makes me as smart as Krugman, because I said essentially the same thing on this blog on February 7, 2011 (fourth paragraph).
And that makes Rick Perry as smart as both of us!
You have changed the subject, but we'll play that game if you want. If Krugman really said that then all three of you are wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe simple fact is that if the rich paid the same percentage in FICA taxes as everyone else then the Social Security system would not have to cut back to 75% in another 25 years. And there is still time to correct that original error by simply removing the cap on the amount of income subject to the tax. Why should the working poor pay a higher percentage of their income than the rich?
Social Security is not in immediate trouble. And it'll only be short of funds in another 25 years because the rich have been allowed to duck paying their fair share by Congress. The crazy thing is this is not even a progressive tax idea (which Republicans have always opposed). It is simply saying that people at all income levels should pay the same percentage. As a conservative, I would think that should appeal to you.
If Krugman really said that...
ReplyDeleteClearly, he did; check out the link.
... then all three of you are wrong.
To hear you actually admit that the great Paul Krugman might have actually been wrong about something is music to my ears. :)