Krugman: The Disappearing Entitlements Crisis

[eridani]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/the-disappearing-entitlements-crisis/

A few years back elite policy discourse in the United States was totally dominated by the supposed entitlements crisis. Serious people all assured each other that history’s greatest menace was the threat posed by the unstoppable growth of Medicaremedicaidandsocialsecurity, which could only be tamed by dismantling the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society, while of course cutting top marginal tax rates.

A few of us argued, however, not just that it was foolish to worry about long-run budget issues in a time of depression and zero interest rates, but that the long run fiscal problems weren’t really that intractable. I used to say that all we needed were death panels and sales taxes — that if we got serious about cost control on health care, the rise in entitlement spending due to an aging population would shrink to a level that could be covered by moderate increases in revenue, meaning that no fundamental dismantling of the welfare state was necessary.

Sure enough, health spending began moderating after the passage of the ACA — and as Bruce Webb points out, if you believe the reports of the Social Security and Medicare trustees, we’re basically already there.

In 2009 the Trustees projected a gigantic rise in Medicare spending, which was obviously unsupportable (although Social Security never looked like a big problem).



The truth is that there never was an entitlements crisis. But now there isn’t even an excuse for pretending that such a crisis exists. I know that a large part of the commentariat is professionally and personally invested in fiscal crisis rhetoric — admitting that it’s no longer relevant would suggest that they have, all along, been silly rather than Serious. But next time you see someone solemnly intoning that we must destroy Medicare to save it, remember that there is no there there.

[LiberalAndProud]

1. Somebody should tell Chris Christie

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/24/politics/chris-christie-jeb-bush-entitlement-reform/

[Gothmog]

2. The ACA is working

This is great news

[phantom power]

3. The fake "entitlement crises" -- one of the big uncontested propaganda victories of the GOP

Basically, nobody pushed back on this, and now everybody "knows" Social security is going bankrupt, and Medicare is going to bankrupt us, and on and on.

It will take at least a generation to unwind the damage that particular propaganda victory did to this country.

[former9thward]

4. Somebody should tell the Social Security trustees.

They say the disability fund will run out next year.

Social Security’s Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund now faces an urgent threat of reserve depletion, requiring prompt corrective action by lawmakers if sudden reductions or interruptions in benefit payments are to be avoided. Beyond DI, Social Security as a whole as well as Medicare cannot sustain projected long-run program costs under currently scheduled financing.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/

[edhopper]

6. another easily fixed

faked crisis

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/social-security-disability-fund-could-run-dry-2016-n396641

[hifiguy]

5. Confound that Krugman!

Fucking everything up with actual numbers and a replicable methodology? Where's the voodoo, the out-of-thin-air bullshit and the Dust of the Grand Wazoo?

Doesn't he know that real economists just pull the ideologically correct thing out of their asses with no regard whatsoever to the real world. After blowing the Koch brothers and sacrificing kittens before their graven images of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand, of course.

And Krugman calls himself an academic? Fie and bosh.