Friday Night After the Fight
16 November 2007 5:00 pm by Taylor Marsh
You can buy me diamonds
or pearls, just don’t ask me questions
about it.
And who are you calling a b—-, pal?
Oh, and by the way, it’s just silly that people keep hitting on this subject, because Social Security is not in crisis. Paul Krugman teaches the clueless:
But Mr. Obama’s Social Security mistake was, in fact, exactly what you’d expect from a candidate who promises to transcend partisanship in an age when that’s neither possible nor desirable.
To understand the nature of Mr. Obama’s mistake, you need to know something about the special role of Social Security in American political discourse.
Inside the Beltway, doomsaying about Social Security — declaring that the program as we know it can’t survive the onslaught of retiring baby boomers — is regarded as a sort of badge of seriousness, a way of showing how statesmanlike and tough-minded you are.
Consider, for example, this exchange about Social Security between Chris Matthews of MSNBC and Tim Russert of NBC, on a recent edition of Mr. Matthews’s program “Hardball.”
Mr. Russert: “Everyone knows Social Security, as it’s constructed, is not going to be in the same place it’s going to be for the next generation, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.”
Mr. Matthews: “It’s a bad Ponzi scheme, at this point.”
Mr. Russert: “Yes.”
But the “everyone” who knows that Social Security is doomed doesn’t include anyone who actually understands the numbers. … ..
Ouch.
