A shell game

In a short NYT editorial, Paul Krugman does an excellent job of explaining the Social Security non-crisis -- that is, the people who want to dismantle the program are having to invent a crisis to justify their initiatives, rather than the cuts being required by an actual problem with the program.

But never mind: the same people who claim that Social Security isn't an independent entity when it runs surpluses also insist that late next decade, when the benefit payments start to exceed the payroll tax receipts, this will represent a crisis - you see, Social Security has its own dedicated financing, and therefore must stand on its own.

There's no honest way anyone can hold both these positions, but very little about the privatizers' position is honest. They come to bury Social Security, not to save it. They aren't sincerely concerned about the possibility that the system will someday fail; they're disturbed by the system's historic success.

Personally, I'd go further and say that this gang would like to undo everything accomplished by the New Deal (and motivated by real experiences of widespread deprivation), but I don't have to answer to the whole NYT readership for my rants...

(via Talking Points Memo)