Wow. Talking Points hasnt

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Wow. Talking Points hasn’t just cracked the Grey Lady. He’s practically got her swooning. First the Monday article about Me-zines and then Paul Krugman’s column on Wednesday about the Bushies’ shameless lockbox climb-down.

Krugman didn’t mention the Talking Points site by name. But he quoted from it, or rather borrowed a quote from Mitch Daniels, which appeared here on this site, and was kind enough to give credit. Something that hasn’t been done by some others who shall remain nameless.

In any case, let me try to salvage this self-promoting post with something approaching substance.

Krugman made a point which I had intended to cover in a follow-up to the original post, but he made it with far greater elegance and authority than I could have mustered. That is, while the concept of a ‘lockbox’ is of course a fiction, it is a very important fiction, or rather one with very real consequences and effects.

Simply put, Social Security’s incoming revenues will not cover its outflows in the coming decades. There is a decent argument put forward by some liberals that the economic forecasts on which these assumptions are based are too pessimistic — and we can largely grow our way out of the problem, if you make certain assumptions based on long-term gains in productivity and so forth. But even if this is true, it’s still sensible and prudent not to base our plans on the rosiest of possible outcomes.

So you come back to the basic point that income won’t cover outflow. Some of that difference will likely have to be made up by some mix of benefit cuts and perhaps tax increases — though I’m very dubious about further raising payroll taxes on workers — or perhaps supplementing Social Security payments with funds from general revenue, i.e. not from payroll taxes.

But the bottom line is that some more money is probably going to have to be found somewhere. By paying off debt now we reduce the amount of money the government currently pays in interest on that debt. That frees up general revenue funds which could go to propping up Social Security down the road.

But the more basic point is that reducing our burden of debt today will make it easier to do some borrowing to shore up Social Security tomorrow. Though the mechanism for all this is complicated by the intricacies of government bond issues, and one part of the government owing money to another part of the government, the essence of the matter is that some of it will likely have to be borrowed. And paying off debt today will make that potential borrowing tomorrow far more feasible.

However this may be, as Krugman notes, the sort of funny-business the Bushies are now engaged in makes it far more likely that Social Security really will go off a cliff in a few decades and that the problem will have to be solved through draconian benefit cuts.

In any case, this is the point I was going to make but Krugman beat me to it. But if Krugman wants to keep up with this Talking Points-Krugman vs. Daniels-Bush tagteam action, what can I say, I’m game.

Along other lines, for the real Talking Points die-hards, I’ve got three new articles which might strike your fancy. This one in the American Prospect details the story behind the Social Security privatization group Treasury Secretary O’Neill spoke to recently. This one in the New Republic Online argues that you need only look at the legislative docket in Congress to see why time is on the Democrats’ side. And this one in Salon.com details an as-yet-untold story about ABC News and the ‘timeline’ Gary Condit’s office made available at the end of June. Here’s a hint: one of the meetings the original timeline described on May 1st (the day Chandra disappeared) never happened.

You might look at this blizzard of words (running the gamut from polemic, to commentary, to investigative reporting) and say to yourself: This is the sign of a fabulously prolific up-and-coming young writer with acute insights on contemporary politics! Actually, the real lesson to be drawn is a touch different. And that would be? That supporting yourself as a freelance writer is *#$%&@ hell on wheels!!!

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