The Great Dreams and Nightmares of Parties

Kevin Drum does some back of the enevelope calculations after reading the Social Security arguments and finds Krugman is right.

... if you take the economic assumptions behind stock returns of 6.5-7% and plug them into Social Security's economic model, the system is solvent as far as the eye can see.

The big caveat here, of course, is that the privatizers are almost certainly wrong. Productivity growth is likely to be higher than the trustees' estimate of 1.6%, but it's not going to be 3.2% either. Something in the middle is more likely.

Still, no matter what numbers you use, Krugman's basic point is sound: if you're going to compare the current Social Security system to a privatized system, you need to use the same economic assumptions for both. Instead, privatizers like to play a shell game where they use gloomy assumptions for Social Security and rosy assumptions for privatization.

But all the real world numbers in the real world won't make any difference - this is really a GOP dream of Social Engineering on a grand scale, a chance to change the psyche of America as the libertarian Rauch puts it.

This is not a crisis - it is a Republican dream much like the Democratic Great Society dream in the 60's. The GOP thinks the Great Society turned into a nightmare. The Democrats are sure that will happen with the GOP Ownership Society dream.

Arm yourself with Social Security documents.