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Socialist Insecurity By
Ramesh Ponnuru & John J. Miller |
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The tone of the piece can be gleaned from a bon mot in Frank's second paragraph. Contrasting the domestic politics of the Bush administration to that of FDR's, he writes, "Freedom from Want my ass, runs the slogan this time around. Bring want back! " At no point in the eight-page essay is Frank willing to concede that maybe proponents of a reform of Social Security based on private investment might sincerely believe that such reform would be good for the vast majority of the country. Reform is portrayed, instead, as a plot to enrich Wall Street brokers and force the poor to work instead of retiring. In graph three, Frank has President Bush's Social Security commission "declar[ing]" that the program "just might run into problems some thirty-seven years in the future." This characterization, in addition to betraying Frank's weakness for italics, is simply untrue. The commission believes that the program will run into trouble long before then, when the benefits it pays out begin to exceed the revenues it brings in. The 37-year figure assumes that Social Security will be able to draw on a trust fund that reform proponents regard as, in crucial respects, mythical. Frank disagrees with their view, but that doesn't excuse his distortion of it. Frank mentions the reformers' view of the trust fund later, but he entirely fails to grapple with it. The trust fund accumulates government bonds, which are promises the government has to redeem. The point that reformers make is not that it is impossible for the government to make good on those promises — although it will be difficult — but that the existence of the trust fund does nothing, by itself, to make it easier to make good on them. If Frank rejects the reformers' approach, he should explain what combination of tax increases, higher debt, benefit cuts, and cuts in other government programs he would use to finance the repayment of those bonds. Instead, he writes that "the real solution to this puzzle is refreshingly simple and straightforward: abolish this wretched commission at once and send the privatizers the way of Alf Landon." His recommendation, in other words, is for us all to join him in sticking our heads in the sand. Well, actually, Frank makes one suggestion: Increase wages, so that more taxes come into the program. If we could wave a magic wand and increase wages, it would certainly be worth doing (Frank apparently believes that low wages are a capitalist plot to keep workers on their toes.) It would not, however, bring the program into balance since the benefits it pays out are also tied to wages. It is difficult to take a public-policy analyst seriously who makes casual references to "the free-market superstition" and cannot even bring himself to concede that welfare reform-excuse us, welfare "reform"-has worked. Social Security has been actuarially bankrupt for a long time. Frank's piece in Harper's is more evidence that its defenders are intellectually bankrupt as well. (For a previous example of Harper's myth-making, click here. For David Skinner's dissection of its editor's views on the war, click here.) Un-Altered It would be one thing if Alter were to acknowledge this reaction, and the almost total absence of any defense of Falwell by conservatives, and say that it's not enough. (Maybe we should also be burning him in effigy or something?) To simply ignore it is, well, par for the course with Jonathan Alter. |
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arper's
has embarrassed itself with a lead story on Social Security by cultural
critic Thomas Frank, who appears neither to know much about the
subject nor to care enough to find out.
