The More You Know: Perils of (Binge) Drinking on the Job

Life’s got to be getting pretty lonely for Paul Krugman, sentinel of the School of Keynes. Literally the entire world is moving away from the ideas he has devoted his professional life to defending.

Binge drinking causes you to make asinine arguments...
Now I know. And knowing is half the battle!

I guess that’s as good a reason as any to turn to the bottle.

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Seniors, Guns and Money

By PAUL KRUGMAN

This has to be one of the funniest political stories of recent weeks: On Tuesday, 42 freshmen Republican members of Congress sent a letter urging President Obama to stop Democrats from engaging in “Mediscare” tactics —

Crickets.

that is, to stop saying that the Republican budget plan released early last month, which would end Medicare as we know it, is a plan to end Medicare as we know it.

Of course, simplifying a very complicated plan like that completely misses the point. Firstly, it only ends Medicare as we know it. Which is to say, it makes it better than the Medicare that we know. This is, by definition, a necessary byproduct of constructive Medicare reform.

Now, you may recall that the people who signed that letter got their current jobs largely by engaging in “Mediscare” tactics of their own.

I suspected Krugman was hitting the sauce pretty hard last year. His comma usage spiked in June and plateaued through the election. Oh well, I’ll fill in the holes in his alcohol-addled memory. Medicare wasn’t an issue at all last election; Obamacare was an issue. However, the biggest issue was that Americans get an uncomfortable shudder when they observe Democrats acting like Democrats.

And bear in mind that what Democrats are saying now is entirely true, while what Republicans were saying last year was completely false. Death panels!

This from the guy wrote a column not three weeks ago arguing that health care was not commerce and that a panel (he called them boards, but the premise holds) of experts was the only civilized means to ration the scarce resources of the healthcare community.

You ask how he could possibly fail to see the stark similarities between a board rationing healthcare and “Death Panels?” You ask in vain. He’s passed out on lawn furniture with a speck of vomit in his beard.

Well, it’s time, said the signatories, to “wipe the slate clean.” How very convenient — and how very pathetic.

He says, with breath reeking of scotch.

That was an olive branch. If Obama’s smart, he’ll take it, because Republicans are about to wipe the floor with him if he makes it a big issue.

Anyway, the truth is that older Americans really should fear Republican budget ideas — and not just because of that plan to dismantle Medicare.

It’s a voucher system. Of all people, I trust the elderly to understand the concept of vouchers.

Given the realities of the federal budget, a party insisting that tax increases of any kind are off the table — as John Boehner, the speaker of the House, says they are — is, necessarily, a party demanding savage cuts in programs that serve older Americans.

Oh you pitiable little dullard. There’s a reason why—as the inestimably inane Matt Miller points out—the Ryan budget plan increases spending on Medicare over the next 10 years from $563B to $953B. That is because the Ryan budget insists—to the detriment of its deficit-reducing stats—that the government honor its financial commitments to seniors.

The more significant changes to Medicare don’t happen for years. Not to be morbid, old people, but the Medicare cuts won’t take place until after you die.

To explain why, let me answer a rhetorical question posed by Professor John Taylor of Stanford University in a recent op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal. He asked, “If government agencies and programs functioned with 19% to 20% of G.D.P. in 2007” — that is, just before the Great Recession — “why is it so hard for them to function with that percentage in 2021?”

An exellent question, considering that the historical revenue-generation of the federal government is roughly 18%.

Mr. Taylor thought he was making the case for not increasing spending.

He was.

But if you know anything about the federal budget, you know that there’s a very good answer to his question — an answer that clearly demonstrates just how extremist that no-tax-increase pledge really is.

Old people get older and costs are going up. Doesn’t answer the question though.

For here’s the quick-and-dirty summary of what the federal government does: It’s a giant insurance company, mainly serving older people, that also has an army.

Now it’s not just the speck of vomit in his beard that’s making me nauseous.

The United States federal government is a beacon for freedom across the world. The Constitution is the single most important document ever penned by man. And yet, he views the United States government as nothing more than a means of pooling money for the sake of ridding its citizens the any last shred of self-reliance and dignity in their dying moments…also it’s got an army.

This is the government that liberals tell you that you should love and want more of. That you should demand solves all of your problems. These are the people that they say should man the reins of the leviathan. Except by Krugman’s own admission, the lumbering government of progressivism only has two tools at its disposal: other people’s money, and a monopoly on force. When the other people’s money runs out, where, then, do you think they’ll turn?

We’re Americans; we have been given the birthright of liberty from a collection of men that reshaped the course of history. We’re better than this. At least we should be.

The great bulk of federal spending that isn’t either defense-related or interest on the debt goes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The first two programs specifically serve seniors. And while Medicaid is often thought of as a poverty program, these days it’s largely about providing nursing care, with about two-thirds of its spending now going to the elderly and/or disabled. By my rough count, in 2007, seniors accounted, one way or another, for about half of federal spending.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, there will soon be a lot more seniors around because the baby boomers have started reaching retirement age.

Here are the numbers: In 2007, there were 20.9 Americans 65 and older for every 100 Americans between the ages of 20 and 64 — that is, the people of normal working age who essentially provide the tax base that supports federal spending. The Social Security Administration expects that number to rise to 27.5 by 2020, and 31.7 by 2025. That’s a lot more people relying on federal social insurance programs.

Don’t look now, but Paul Krugman is arguing that entitlement spending is unsustainable.

Nor is demography the whole story. Over the long term, health care spending has consistently grown faster than the economy, raising the costs of Medicare and Medicaid as a share of G.D.P. Cost-control measures — the very kind of measures Republicans demonized last year, with their cries of death panels — can help slow the rise, but few experts believe that we can avoid some “excess cost growth” over the next decade.

Keep in mind, he’s arguing that using federally-mandated healthcare rationing to  limit options to the sick and dying is more humane than buying private health insurance.

I’d wager that the sick and dying disagree.

Between an aging population and rising health costs, then, preserving anything like the programs for seniors we now have will require a significant increase in spending on these programs as a percentage of G.D.P.  And unless we offset that rise with drastic cuts in defense spending — which Republicans, needless to say, oppose —

The idea that defense spending should be the first thing on the block is just stupid, but that was what Boehner meant when he said that everything was on the table. He was specifically referring to defense.

this means a substantial rise in overall spending, which we can afford only if taxes rise.

That will, predictably, will be followed by perpetual recession, massive unemployment, calamitously volatile financial markets, poverty, destruction, riots, and ultimately more drastic cuts to programs to seniors than the ones currently proposed. Then after all that, we’ll default anyways because we waited too long.

So when people like Mr. Boehner reject out of hand any increase in taxes, they are, in effect, declaring that they won’t preserve programs benefiting older Americans in anything like their current form. It’s just a matter of arithmetic.

He just admitted that he can’t preserve programs benefitting older Americans in anything like their current form without a) cutting defense spending to next-to-nothing—in which case we’re vulnerable to hostile takeover from such formidable military powers as Ghana, Estonia, Swaziland, and Canada—or b) massively raising taxes. Meanwhile neither option will resolve the underlying issue that the entitlement society is buckling under its own weight. This isn’t me arguing it—it’s him.

Which brings me back to those Republican freshmen.

And brings me to a bottle of wine. He still doesn’t get it, does he?

Last year, older voters, who split their vote almost evenly between the parties in 2008, swung overwhelmingly to the G.O.P., as Republicans posed successfully as defenders of Medicare.

Not defenders of Medicare. Opponents of Obamacare.

Now Democrats are pointing out that the G.O.P., far from defending Medicare, is actually trying to dismantle the program.

Vouchers!

So you can see why those Republican freshmen are nervous.

Fuck wine. I’m going to need gin. Not only did he blithely skate past the whole issue of entitlement sustainability, but he also gave the most staggeringly incompetent political analysis I’ve seen since the election, and used it to make a point diametrically opposed to reality.

Republicans are trying to reform Medicare, not gut it.

Their reforms do not affect current seniors.

They can’t do anything right now anyways because the President and the Senate will never go along, at least for the time being.

They are bringing up the issue because a) it’s important and b) it’s a winning issue for Republicans.

Entitlement reform is no longer an issue Republicans would rather avoid. Thanks to buffoons like Krugman, the country knows (not believes; knows) that entitlements can’t continue in their current form in perpetuity.

But the Democrats aren’t engaging in scare tactics, they’re simply telling the truth.

Except time and time again, you’ve said that Republicans want to gut Medicare without once using the word voucher, which pretty simply sums up the Ryan plan for Medicare. That’s not spinning the truth. That’s not flirting with reality. That’s flat-out predatory lying.

In an article designed to show the allegedly undeniable truth that the Republican plan is bad for seniors, Krugman hasn’t even addressed the Republican plan. Indeed, he fails to distinguish the Ryan budget from Republicans other budget proposals.

That’s not just lying, it’s lazy lying.

Policy details aside,

Because you’re too lazy/drunk to look them up.

the G.O.P.’s rigid anti-tax position also makes it, necessarily, the enemy of the senior-oriented programs that account for much of federal spending.

Again, revenue as a percent of GDP is uncorrelated with tax rates.

And that’s something voters ought to know.

In one column, Krugman has managed to crystallize the difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives view the government as the protector of their sacred rights; liberals view it as an ATM.

Given the results of the 2010 elections, that’s something that voters already know.