Krugman on the Debt and Deficits

Paul Krugman has taken some rather interesting stances on the fiscal situation here in the U.S. First up is a piece entitled Fiscal Train Wreck from March 2003, With war looming, it's time to be prepared. So last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage. It means higher monthly payments, but I'm terrified about what will happen to interest rates ...

National Debt Hysteria?

In a front piece story in today's NYT, Edmund Andrews warns that the bill is about to come due on the massive borrowing the federal government has engaged in. Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to ...

Cognitive Dissonance on the Lessons to be Learned from China

Time features an article on the “Five Things the U.S. Can Learn from China” that I can only characterize as surreal. Here are the five lessons: Be Ambitious Education Matters Look After the Elderly Save More Look over the Horizon For the details you'll just have to read the article. On ambition, the article's author, Bill Powell, returns to a theme often sounded by Tom Friedman ...

Elections Don’t End Debate

While I share Michael Tomasky's disdain for people carrying signs about "the blood of tyrants" while protesting democratically elected leaders, he goes too far here: There was an election. One guy one, another guy lost. It wasn't disputed. It wasn't decided by an ideologically divided Supreme Court, which gave the win to the guy who won fewer votes. This election wasn't ...

Congressional Revolution Needed?

Ezra Klein and Steve Benen are recirculating this somewhat interesting chart on political polarization in America by political scientists Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. Ezra argues that "this level of polarization makes it virtually impossible to govern in a system that is designed to foil majorities and require a constant three-fifths consensus. It's not good if the country ...

Democrats Should Embrace States’ Rights

Alex Massie argues that the current inability of the Democrats to pass meaningful health care reform, one of their signature issues, despite overwhelming control of the government shows the system is broken. It's more difficult than it was in LBJ's day, mind you. All the horse-trading that once went on in private now takes place in a world of Twitter and ...

Obama Health Care = Bush Social Security

Patrick Ruffini has used considerably fewer than 140 characters to make an interesting point: "Obama Health Care = Bush Social Security." The analogy is a strong one. You will recall that President George W. Bush, fresh off re-election in 2004 pledged to use his "political capital" to pass a major reform of the Social Security system that included a private option.  Despite ...

Social Security ‘Pampering Scandal’

Kevin Drum patiently explains to the folks at Townhall and NRO that holding a three day convention in a central location for $1071 a person is far from a boondoogle. That's unbelievable.  SSA must have some world class penny-pinching accountants and event planners on their staff.  I doubt there's a corporation in America that would even try to budget less than ...

Gay Bigamy Now!

Since well before I thought the matter one for serious consideration, Andrew Sullivan has been making insightful, compelling arguments in favor of same-sex marriage.  This, alas, is not one of them. A reader makes an excellent point: One thing that struck me about the DOJ's argument that DOMA does not violate the equal protection clause since homosexuals are still able to marry ...

Mohamed El-Erian on Bernanke

Mohamed El-Erian points out that there are good reasons for Bernanke to be worried about the future with regards to fiscal policy. Mr Bernanke acknowledges that, despite the ”green shoots”, there are still question mark over which components of demand will kick into gear once the cyclical inventory pick-up runs its course, as it will inevitably do so over the ...

Health Care Fallacy #1

Tyler Cowen has three health care fallacies and the first one is something I've mentioned before (and tooke quite a bit of heat for), Today's report is this: The financial outlook for Medicare and Social Security has significantly worsened, as the bad economy and mounting job losses have pushed both programs years closer to insolvency, according to a grim report issued Tuesday ...

Abolish Retirement!

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry has a brilliant idea for saving Social Security: Make people work forever! Old age is a period of long, gradual, inevitable decay, but I think it is self-evident that the more active you are, the more these effects are postponed and mitigated. I don’t have many statistics to quote on this but I think it’s out there and ...

Ari Fleischer’s Flat Tax

Ari Fleischer's WSJ column "It's Bad for Our Democracy to Exempt Half the Country From Income Taxes" is attracting widespread commentary, mostly along predictable party lines. While I agree with the basic premises (see, for example, "Class Warfare: Framing the Debate") I am rather dubious of his actual programmatic prescription: I favor the abolition of all Social Security, Medicare and estate taxes. ...

Representation Without Taxation

Amity Shlaes tells NPR's Kai Ryssdal that the current tax system reverses the problem that the founders faced. Taxation without representation. That's what our nation's founders rebelled against. Subjects in the colonies were sending money home to the crown without getting say in their own government. The course of U.S. history can be seen as progress by those who are taxed ...

Social Security & Medicare: Don’t Worry Be Happy

In response to my last post on Social Security, Medicare and the medium to long term fiscal outlook for the U.S. Bernard Finel has another response. In this post Bernard looks at the deficits from 1950 to 2007 and writes, in part, (Warning: Biiiiig Post Below the fold.) And indeed, a shallow assessment of the federal budget supports Steve’s argument. ...