The simple answer is that Krugman is lying, and is completely untrustworthy. I don't know if I hate him, but pretty close. Unlike most of the other people spouting that crap, he unquestionably knows better, so he's just lying. While I definitely don't trust those so-called "treasury bonds", even if you pretend that they're ordinary government bonds Krugman's assertions are wrong.
Plenty of Democrats with rock-solid liberal credentials have been trying to warn people about the humongous funding shortfall. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the first one I remember; he co-chaired one of the uncountable blue ribbon commissions on reforming Social Security (and he came out in favor of private accounts). Since then lots more ideologically unassailable Democrats (Larry Kotlikoff, Alice Rivlin, Ron Haskins, Isabel Sawhill, Robert Reischauer, etc.) have also been pointing out the asset-liability gap. And if that's not enough, the Social Security Administration itself issues annual reports detailing the several trillion dollar gap, and the GAO and CBO both do as well, using slightly different assumptions and coming to the same basic conclusion, plus or minus a trillion or two.
The fact is that if it only required minor changes to make the numbers balance for the indefinite future, we would have done it already.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterfish
no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 01:51 pm (UTC)Plenty of Democrats with rock-solid liberal credentials have been trying to warn people about the humongous funding shortfall. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the first one I remember; he co-chaired one of the uncountable blue ribbon commissions on reforming Social Security (and he came out in favor of private accounts). Since then lots more ideologically unassailable Democrats (Larry Kotlikoff, Alice Rivlin, Ron Haskins, Isabel Sawhill, Robert Reischauer, etc.) have also been pointing out the asset-liability gap. And if that's not enough, the Social Security Administration itself issues annual reports detailing the several trillion dollar gap, and the GAO and CBO both do as well, using slightly different assumptions and coming to the same basic conclusion, plus or minus a trillion or two.
The fact is that if it only required minor changes to make the numbers balance for the indefinite future, we would have done it already.