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Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
Daily Kos — ... up.   Paul Krugman: Comrade Greenspan wants us to seize the economy’s commanding heights. WaPo Poll: Deficit Concern Jumps ... Among the GOP E. J. Dionne: When President Obama addresses the nation tomorrow, he should not be distracted by Washington's obsessions over partisanship and ideology. He needs, above all, to speak to the country's raw fear. Robert Kuttner: Fiscal conservatives are using the temporary deficit increase ...

Enough Politicized Economic Kabuki
Firedoglake — ... middle class (or "non-yacht-owning classes") downward hold any allure. No amount of jazz hands and sparkly costumes makes "screw you, I got mine" palatable. I'm especially fond of the "attack social security and medicare" crowd, proposing a series of cuts to programs they've been trying to dismantle since FDR's day. Because that's never been tried before. Let's be honest: that kabuki is shopworn. And their numbers don't add up: ...

Morning Skim: Bailout Equality; Links for Econ Geeks; an Oscar Invite
Opinionator — ... sake of ideological purity. It’s just crazy. For the sake of Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford’s presidential campaigns, a bunch of poor people in Southern states may go without unemployment benefits. And it’s not like the refusal to take money serves other purposes — the total stimulus bill won’t be reduced; no rich people will benefit. The GOP primary gods are simply demanding a sacrifice — and these jokers are happy to play Abraham to their constituents’ Isaac. Washington Post : Robert Kuttner is skeptical of all the talk about fixing entitlements. “What’s wrong with the ...

Entitlements on the back of an envelope
Paul Krugman — Today’s “fiscal responsibility” summit, which was originally much feared as a Trojan Horse for Social Security cuts, has apparently been downgraded into relative obscurity. But I thought it might nonetheless be worth talking briefly about the math of the entitlements issue. Usually this is done with fairly elaborate projections, but I think the essence can be explained with a back-of-the-envelope calculation. So here goes. Right now, the federal government spends about 9 percent of GDP on the three biggies, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with the total roughly evenly ...

Social Security: White House Triangulates Against Pete Peterson
Firedoglake — ... Rob Kuttner writes in the Washington Post this morning that billionaire Social Security slasher Pete Peterson was originally scheduled to be a keynote speaker at today's fiscal responsibility summit (as ...

The Story Behind That Scrapped White House Social Security Task Force
TPM Election Central — ... that the White House had abandoned plans to unveil a Social Security "task force" at today's fiscal summit, raising the question of whether the Obama administration is ready to conduct separate debate over the long-term health of Social Security and Medicare -- or whether the tired canard of "dangerous entitlement spending" will continue to rule the political roost. ...

uggabugga — ... partner.*). This reduction of labor's bargaining power has led to: Weaker unions (and less union membership). Corporations being able to shed pension obligations and put the burden on the individual via 401Ks. Cut backs in health care coverage by employers. The failure of labor to share in the productivity gains over the last three decades. (Instead, those gains go to executives or shareholders.)Anyway, with that last point in mind, here's Robert Kuttner in the Washington Post: (emp add) Social Security is financed by ...

Happy Talk on Social Security
The Corner on National Review Online — Monday, February 23, 2009 [image] Happy Talk on Social Security [Ramesh Ponnuru] In the Washington Post , Robert Kuttner claims that Social Security has no big solvency problem. The Congressional Budget Office puts the 75-year shortfall at only about one-third of 1 percent of projected gross domestic product. Social Security is financed by taxes on wages and since the mid-1970s, wage growth has stagnated. If median wages rose with productivity growth, as they did during the first three decades after World War II, Social Security would enjoy a big surplus. That CBO estimate ...

Legacy Media and Bloggers Alike: Why it’s Important to Expose Sources Who Lie to You
Firedoglake — ... , and many of us worked together to publicly raise a really serious red flag well before traditional media reported it (and to anyone who linked and helped spread the word, many thanks). We also helped stop billionaire anti-Social Security fetishist Pete Peterson from giving the keynote address at the fiscal responsibility summit (something "anonymous administration sources" denied to Greg Sargent, but which Rob Kuttner confirmed in the Washington Post). ...

Hullabaloo — ... That's not exactly correct. The Peterson Foundation was scheduled to be involved with the summit and they are not about health care. What happened was that the White House realized that attacking social security was going to ...