Wow. He’s sure a downer.
We noted earlier that Rich Thau is the guy who helped the congressional Republicans put together the Social Security playbook they huddled with over the weekend. Here on the Third Millenium website is Thau’s promotional video. Right after the screen flashes “the media turn to him for provocative commentary,” at timestamp 3:35, Thau hits listeners with this doozy: âIf we do nothing between now and the year 2012, we have two drastic options. The government can either cut benefits by about thirty percent or raise payroll taxes by thirty percent. Both are very unpleasant.â
Presumably he was working from the ridiculously pessimistic numbers of a few years ago, not the more up-to-date ridiculously pessimistic numbers. But doesn’t the phase-out crowd say that the Social Security gotterdammerung happens in 2042 or 2052?
