Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (The New York Times's Downward Spiral Continues Department)

Earlier this week, Paul Krugman wrote apropos of Bush's "progressive indexing" Social Security proposal:

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A Gut Punch to the Middle: The average worker - average pay now is $37,000 - retiring in 2075 would face a cut equal to 10 percent of pre-retirement income. Workers earning 60 percent more than average, the equivalent of $58,000 today, would see benefit cuts equal to almost 13 percent of their income before retirement.But above that level, the cuts would become less and less significant. Workers earning three times the average wage would face cuts equal to only 9 percent of their income before retirement. Someone earning the equivalent of $1 million today would see benefit cuts equal to only 1 percent of pre-retirement income.In short, this would be a gut punch to the middle class, but a fleabite for the truly wealthy...

Today, David Brooks writes:

Calling Democrats' Bluff - New York Times: [Bush] has asked us to redistribute money down the income scale. Why should programs for children and families be strangled so Donald Trump can get bigger benefit checks?...

Shouldn't the New York Times have columnists who can read their own paper?

Perhaps the senior management of the Times could provide us with some insight into their lack of quality control?

Comments

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/opinion/03tue1.html?ex=1116129600&en=48f12f43262109a8&ei=5070

Hitting the Middle Class, Again

As he moved into the home stretch of his 60-day Social Security road show last week, it became clear that President Bush had saved the worst for last.

Mr. Bush endorsed a proposal that would take a huge bite out of the Social Security retirement benefits for the middle class, claiming that would close some 70 percent of the system's financing gap. That figure is almost certainly overstated. Under the proposed reductions, young workers who now earn about $36,000 would face a 16 percent cut; those earning about $58,000 would face a cut of 25 percent, and those earning $90,000, 29 percent. People not yet in the work force would face even larger reductions.

Mr. Bush says these cuts would enable the system to continue paying benefits at the current level to the 30 percent of recipients who now make less than $20,000. But fully two-thirds of retirees rely on Social Security for more than half of their income. Moreover, the Bush plan gives the false impression that the wealthiest beneficiaries would bear the most pain. That's not the case. The wealthier one is, the lower the percentage of retirement income coming from Social Security, so even a big cut has little impact....

[pgl]

Brooks is following the Rich Lowry definition of wealthy but note over at Mark Thoma's the letter from Al "not Glenn" Hubbard that goes after Krugman. $36,000 a year is affluence? I suspect Nancy Pelosi is watching and getting her staff to write new talking points simply quoting Al "not Glenn".

[Hedley Lamarr]

"[Bush] has asked us to redistribute money down the income scale."

This will be a new definition for Chutzpah, replacing the old one about the orphan in court.

All I can say is watch what they do, not what they say.

[Half Sigma]

Krugman's column is just meaningless out of context statistics.

To quote myself:

"President Bush has proposed making the system fairer by reducing benefits for those with higher incomes. This progressive proposal sounds like something that the left wing would normally applaud, but because they hate Bush they can only criticize it."

http://www.halfsigma.com/2005/04/poor_workers_an.html

[P O'Neill]

It's bizarre how the right wants Paris Hilton to be able to keep her entire inheritance yet lose her social security check.

[scott]

"Krugman's column is just meaningless out of context statistics." -- Half Sigma
Care to elaborate, or is that the sum total of your argument?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/opinion/03tue1.html?ex=1116129600&en=48f12f43262109a8&ei=5070

Hitting the Middle Class, Again

By 2075, an average worker's benefit cut would equal 10 percent of pre-retirement income; a millionaire's reduction would be only 1 percent.

Worse, if Mr. Bush succeeded in creating private accounts, these newly proposed cuts would be only the first whack at retirement benefits. Workers who opened private accounts would also see their government benefits reduced by one dollar for every dollar invested - plus interest, computed at 3 percentage points above inflation. That would occur even if a private account performed miserably. In the end, the Social Security checks would be minimal - or nonexistent - for millions of Americans....

[howard]

The answer to the prof's question is easy: senior management at the times believes that opinion columns, being made up of opinions, have no obligation to be based in fact. This is an exceptionally stupid position with no underlying logic whatsoever, but it is what times senior management believes.

There is no answer to the likes of half sigma, who clearly don't have any idea of what they are talking about but are sure that george bush must be bold and capable and correct.

Which is to say, the only real difference between david brooks, well-paid ny times columnist, and half sigma, anonymous blogger, is the size of the platform, not the quality of the thinking.

[pgl]

Half Sigma. Your post showed how poor your understanding of this issue is. See my comment over at your blog.

[Dan Ryan]

I think quality control is hiring John Tierney to make David Brooks look good.

[Ahmad Chalabi]

Got oil?

-

[Jim Lund]

Economics, 'course. The NYT isn't an academic enterprise but a premium ad vendor. So does Brooks sell papers? polish the brand reputation? And secondarily, consider Brooks as market failure--Brooks columns are pleasing to the executives at the big companies that advertise in the Times, and perhaps more effective at that then at selling papers. Brooks is the NYT's Cardiff Giant.

[Delicious Pundit]

Furthermore, consider that the Times would like to be a national paper, which means that they want to be at the end of driveways in suburbs of places like Birmingham and Houston and Phoenix. People are not going to be walking down those driveways in the early morning to be told, every day, that they are wrong and/or misguided. Hence the anodyne words of Brooks and Tierney.

[Half Sigma]

Half Sigma is a pseudonym but I'm not truly anonymous, if you poke around my blog my real name is there.

Krugman compares the social security check to a person's total working income. Since the check maxes out at a certain level, it's obvious that as a person earns more and more, the check becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of his income. So thus the meaningless statistic that when the SS check is cut, for a rich person this cut is a smaller percent of his income. Big deal, as a percent of the actual check, it's the same for Donald Trump as it is for some working guy lucky enough to have earned enough money to qualify for the maximum sized check.

If you read my blog, you will see that I am not an unthinking fan of W, but in this case, the only reason leftists are complaining about this suggestion is because they hate W so much that they can't even evaluate it honestly.

[jr]

a lie told often enough seems like the truth to joe sixpack

[John Emerson]

Where do those guys come from? Tau Kappa Epsilon?

"The only reason leftists are complaining about this suggestion [Social Security "reform"]is because they hate W so much that they can't even evaluate it honestly."

Do you actually read what Brad writes? He's made multiple criticisms, and if you want to be able to disagree with him, you have to know what he said first.

I know that they never told you that at Teke house, but it's true!

[Bruce Webb]

Hey quarter Sigma, the entire cut comes from the income from $25k to $90k, so people who earn exactly $90k are the most hosed. That is called a bend point, as in "Hey you have a pretty good job, not CEO level of course, but pretty good. Now bend over".

The current system promises 100% for everyone until 2041 and 74% thereafter. And if you want proposals to keep the bottom 30% at 100% while maintaining everyone else at 74% we can provide that pretty easily, just assuming 66% of 2004 productivity growth fills the whole gap. Exactly nobody believes this is about protecting benefits for the working poort.

I freely admit I am a paid up member of the Buck Fush coalition. I predicted hundreds and hundreds of boys and girls would come back from Iraq in boxes but that hatred did not make me blind. I can still add up numbers and Bush's numbers on Social Security don't add up.

We didn't prevent the War on Iraq, we tried our best to argue in the Reality Based Continuum but ultimately failed. But we can still shove a Social Security brick up rightests' butts sideways.

"Please sir, can I have another?" Of course you can.

[MTC]

What mystifies me is what kind of life these Bush supporters think they are going to be living after this junta of Harold Carswells finishes with The Country Formerly Known as the United States of America?

[Susan]

good question!
Why can't an editor read over BoBo's column and ask, "Did you happen to notice that what Paul Krugman has written on the subject makes your column look like total horse manure? Are you sure you want to go with this??

[anne]

Notice that the New York lead editorial takes precisely the approach that Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have taken to the perfectly unfair Social Security proposal by the President. The proposal would truly harm middle income households. This is what ending the New Deal middle class legacy comes to.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/opinion/03tue1.html?ex=1116129600&en=48f12f43262109a8&ei=5070

Hitting the Middle Class, Again

As he moved into the home stretch of his 60-day Social Security road show last week, it became clear that President Bush had saved the worst for last.

[Randall]

Anne

Thank you for the ample New York Times texts, because the link generator does not appear to work any longer and we will otherwise lose the context in a few days. The New York Times link generator has been an important tool for my students, but your posts have helped a lot.

[Matt Festa]

Brad,

Perhaps Brooks has stopped reading Krugman because he has lost all semblence of respectability. When you predict before Bush takes office that there will be no recession (end of 2000), then go on and predict deflation (wrong), a double dip (wrong), jobless recovery (wrong), and now stagflation people stop paying attention to you. I know from experience. I used to read Krugman when he wrote for Slate. He was once good.....now, who cares what he has to say anymore?

Matt

PS- Pretty soon, if he keeps guessing, he may be right.

[bruce]

People with incomes up to 90k still pay on all their income but they start cutting at 37K. How is that "progressive?" Maybe if they started to reduce benefits after the 90k line that might be useful, but that would still leave a huge chunk of the middle class benefitting from SS, which would keep them politically invested. As the proposal stands it will make SS less "worthwhile" for people earning solid middle incomes, and thus politically deserted.

You see, this is cause and effect. Proposals like this are one the REASONS I can't stand Bush, not the other way around.

[Randall]

Matt Festa

Perhaps if you bothered to read Paul Krugman as Brad Delong does and I do, you would come to understand that every point you made is thoroughly wrong. Imagine, I quite enjoy and learn from Paul Krugman.

[liberal]

nmg wrote, "I think Half Sigma's analysis is right. The hatred of Bush prevents democrat partisans from thinking rationally about the issue."

LOL!

You're the guy who thought the debt in the SS Trust Fund didn't count toward the debt ceiling.

[howard]

Half Sigma, Krugman provided a perfectly clear metric by which to assess the bogus notion of shared sacrifice. You haven't provided any meaningful insight that would convince us that krugman is wrong, and sadly, given how short life is, i have no interest in checking out your site to find out whether you are or are not a blind adherent of george bush. I've learned enough in your comments to know that it's not worth the time.

As others have already noted: there is no reason why anyone who believes in social insurance to take bush's proposals, such as they are, seriously. Broadly speaking, the man is a combination of the worst of harding, johnson, and nixon, but when it comes to misleading the public on the factual content of his proposals, bush is in a class by himself. That's a reputation he's earned, richly.

So our repugnance towards Brooks, Tierny, and the proposals of the man they are enabling is quite real, and rooted in analytic thought, not some emotional reaction that if george proposed it, it must be bad (although that's not a bad place to start any analysis from). I, personally, will roll the dice on the Low Cost model being more accurate and no cuts required at all, and i will not regard anyone as serious about this matter who doesn't at least acknowledge the hazards of guessing 75 years' worth of economic growth.

[The artist formerly known as M.]

Matt Festa, I initially took your first sentence to mean that David Brooks has lost all "semblence of respectability." I believe this to be accurate.

[anne]

David Brooks

"When a Republican president embraces progressive indexing, something big is happening. When the Democrats oppose it, you know their party has betrayed an animating ideal."

The comment is not foolish, rather there is simply no honesty in this comment. The Republican idea is to turn Social Security to a poverty program at the express expense of middle income households. However, there will be no increase in benefits for low income households. Democrats are trying to explain what Republicans are about, and to perserve Social Security.

[anne]

Progressive indexing apparently means taking from the middle class but allowing the poor to keep what little they already have. Consider what regressive indexing would be.

[anne]

Private Social Security accounts could indeed be fine, as long as such accounts were added to Social Security with no reduction of benefits. Sweden has such a promising plan. Also, a portion of the Social Security surplus might be invested in a non-voting share stock market index in hope of even raising benefits if higher returns are realized.

The Administration and Congressional leadership intent however is to cut Social Security benefits, and set aside the program in time.

[dcb]

NMG: "Care to comment on the fact that until Bush proposed it, many Democrats were open to a SS reform using private accounts?"

nmg, I know the answer to this one and I don't know ANYTHING about economics. Seriously, I don't know what any of this means --my idea of good economics is to order the cheapest thing on the menu. You just have to read this site for a couple of days though and this one is eeeeeeasy..

It's not the idea, it's the implementation. Brad has said again and again: carve-outs bad, add-ons good.

People didn't suddenly decide priavte accounts are bad because they hate Bush and he's proposed them. They hate Bush's private accounts because they are a bad implementation of the idea.

[Mike Taylor]

Regarding Mr. Bush's Social Security Plan, the administration is counting on the typical American to do what it always does; fail to do the math and get informed, involved, and empowered.

In this particular instance, our lack of action will cost middle and low income Americans a ton in reduced benefits, while giving the rich (again) huge breaks.

Remember, next time you vote, the likes of Donald Trump love this administration. His most memorable quote to date: "YOU'RE FIRED!" Enough said!

[anne]

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-2_archives/000012.html

February 5, 2004

Some lessons from Sweden on the pros and cons of privatizing Social Security.
By Alan B. Krueger - New York Times

Sweden now has a blended system.... Employers and employees contribute a combined 16 percent of payroll toward a "pay as you go" retirement system like Social Security, and an additional 2.5 percent toward individual retirement accounts. Those born after 1954 are fully in the new system, while older workers are phased in....

The consequences of making a bad investment decision in Sweden are much less severe than they would be in the United States if Mr. Bush gets his way and allows workers to divert part of the 12.4 percent of their paycheck that goes to Social Security -- half from the employee, half from the employer -- into personal accounts.

Sweden devotes 16 percent of payroll to an earnings-linked pension system, creating a strong safety net beneath individual accounts. Sweden also established a "guaranteed pension" that provides a minimum pension amount, in excess of the poverty line, to anyone with little or no pension income....

Notice the full article in the comments section of Brad's Blog.

[anne]

Obviously, I just do not understand:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/politics/08drugs.html?ex=1115697600&en=b62262be31f6be71&ei=5070

Under New Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, Food Stamps May Be Reduced
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON - Elderly people with low incomes may lose some of their food stamps if they sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, the Bush administration said Saturday.

When Medicare begins covering drugs in January, older Americans will spend less of their own money on drugs and will therefore have more to spend on food, reducing their need for food stamps, officials said.

The new reading of the Medicare law, set forth in a document sent to Congressional offices this week, comes just as federal officials begin a nationwide campaign to persuade low-income people to apply for the drug benefit.

The document, addressed to elderly and disabled people who receive food stamps, says, 'You may qualify for extra help paying for your Medicare prescription drug costs.' But it adds, 'If you qualify for extra help, your food stamp benefits may decline.' ...

[Steve]

I don't get economics either, but the criticisms of the Krugman piece seem spot on. If I make 90000, and my social security check is 90000, then every percent of social security benefit cut is an equal percent of my total income cut (cut my social security check by 15%, and you will cut my total income by 15%). If I make 1000000, and my social security check is 90000, then every percent of social security benefit cut is insignificant compared to my total income (cut my social security check by 15%, and you will cut my total income by 0.1% or so). Total flim-flam. If Krugman is so right, and Bush is so wrong, why does he have to resort to this kind of flim-flam to make his point?

[Scott McArthur]

Steve,
Read the column again, you missed the point.
The Presidents supporters are prancing around squawking: it's progressive, it's progressive, look how moderate and reasonable we are, squawk.
Kruggy does that math and well well well, looks like the Admin told another fib. After 58 000 k a year the size of the benefit cut becomes smaller and smaller not larger and larger.

So the gut punch is to the Middle Class, the well heeled get off lightly. So don't come to us a la Brooks wrapped up in "Mr Reasonable" clothing.

[Kyle Moore]

This is a funny post because Brooks clearly acknowledges that it will require sacrifices by the middle class.

"By embracing the progressive indexing of Social Security benefits, the president has asked us to make a shared sacrifice for the common good. He's asking middle- and upper-class folks to accept benefit cuts so there will be money for the people who are really facing poverty."

It does a disservice to us all to quote Brook's rhetorical flourishes as opposed to his actual claims about the effects of Bush's plan.

[meager]

http://www.airbekas.ee/forum/messages/13958.html iwasshoespilling

[boutique]

http://www.terre-equestre.com/forum/wwwboard-vf/messages/4474.html botherfrigidstraddle