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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (27561)	4/9/2008 9:03:42 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: "The author did not seem to address the other side of the projections. I doubt that any of the projections reflect politicians likely tinkering with benefit formulas to ensure that bankruptcy is accelerated." It's TRUE that ALL government programs (transfer payment programs, military spending, etc., etc., ALL PROGRAMS) are dependent upon a strong and growing economy to produce financing for them. If politicians SCREW UP the long-term grow rate of the American economy, then they ALSO are screwing up the government's ability to pay for programs. (So, the take-away-lesson is that we should be very careful to always keep the economy strong and growing and competitive.... :-) HOWEVER, I highly doubt (despite the perennially high level of economic stupidity with most pols in D.C, and with all due respect for your right to entertain conspiracy theories if you want to...) that it's politically very likely that actions will be taken at this late juncture to, (as you say): "tinker with benefit formulas to ensure that bankruptcy is accelerated". LOL! Most ALL the political pressure for several decades now has been in the OPPOSITE direction... to cut benefits or raise the revenue cap, or to add the government's workers back into the general FICA system. All changes to extend the survivability of the program... (not the other way around.) Re: "Mark that author down as a partisan liberal." The chief economist for Capital One Bank? Why? Because he points out something that doesn't taste good with Cool-Aid? For simply pointing out the utterly obvious from the annual official government actuarial projections? That the alarmist annual projections of the imminent 'bankruptcy' keep getting pushed back further and further into the future each year that the government issues it's projections? And that if the US economy can simply average somewhere close (even lower works! Say 2.9% or so) to it's average growth rate over the past (3.4%) then, even without any reforms or changes at all, the actuaries project no failure of the system 'ever' (out to the limits of their extrapolations....) Does pointing out the utterly obvious necessitate that someone be a 'Liberal' now? (Is that how your ruler works? Hey... I'd certainly never be the one to argue that the FICA system doesn't require serious reforms (& I've personally supported the concept of full privatization and opening up of investment choices to the world ever since Bill Buckley first suggested it in the early 'seventies... so I'm no Johnny-come-lately on the issue of privatization. (Too bad that Bush blew the budget though, huh?) 'Cause it would require massive amounts of money in the intermediate term --- given our current demographic realities --- to effect such privatization changes right now. The easiest time to do something like that is when you have huge numbers of children in the nation's demographic cohorts, and relatively much fewer old cohorts... such as at the start and 'early innings' of 'baby booms'.... What is perhaps EVEN MORE IMPORTANT to note at this point though is that the MEDICARE/MEDICAID system is going broke nearly for SURE, and much, much earlier. Largely based upon the DOUBLE DIGIT GROW IN HEALTH CARE EXPENSES that has been happening now --- literally --- for decades. (And, of course, the recent Bush additions to the transfer obligations.) The Medicare imbalances dwarf anything visible in the FICA projections --- and is due to a fundamentally much more serious set of inter-related circumstances: the ENTIRE AMERICAN MEDICAL SYSTEM (patents, insurance, lack of cost controls, lack of quality incentives, legal, Pharma, protectionism, etc., etc.) is producing FAR SUB-OPTIMAL RESULTS for the world-leading per capita finances we poor heedlessly into it.