Social Security in the Heartland series: All year the media ignored how “fixes” to Social Security pushed by political elites would affect ordinary folks. The nine profiles of people living in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, tell the tale. Our New Year’s wish is for the media to pay attention to people like them.
More Words of Wisdom from Alan Simpson: As co-chair of the president’s deficit commission, the former senator from Wyoming continued to make offensive, arrogant, and condescending remarks about retirees, women, and the poor whom he called the “lesser people in society.” Simpson got away with it, perhaps because the president wanted him around so his remarks could set the premise for next year’s showdown on Social Security.
A Tale of Two Jonathans: Throughout the health reform debate, the media turned to a handful of sources, in effect giving their audiences a one-dimensional view of the issues. MIT economist Jonathan Gruber was one the media called on too many times. Jonathan Oberlander, a political scientist from the UNC, was one they didn’t call on enough.
Bob Reich on the What-It-All Means Question: The elements of the health reform law sprang from conservative orthodoxy, and were pushed by conservative think tanks for years before a Democratic president embraced them as his own. The president thought Republicans would be on board. Given the results of the midterm election and what may follow, he may have misjudged. Until former labor secretary Robert Reich put all this in its rightful context, the public may still have thought socialized medicine was at hand.
The Best-Covered News Story, Ever?: An academic in health administration at the University of Chicago writing in The New Republic argued that “health care reform was the most careful, most thorough, and most effective reporting of any major story ever.” We begged to disagree. Was that why most Americans didn’t know about the individual mandate until the courts started taking a look?
A Fresh Take on Health Care: The AP’s Carla Johnson did some digging, and guess what? She found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, more people will use emergency rooms despite health care reform, and that ER congestion isn’t likely to end. Guess what again? Emergency room use continued to rise in Massachusetts, even with its widely hailed health reform law. During the debate, the press missed on this one. The uninsured were not really responsible for significant ER use in Massachusetts.
Social Security Under Attack: Until the last few weeks, the media allowed few new voices to talk about Social Security and its contribution, or lack thereof, to the deficit. News outlets reported that elite consensus had formed about the correct solutions without signaling that others might have different opinions. Reporting on Social Security has not been the media’s finest hour.
RE: "A Tale of Two Jonathans"...
So, the MSM relied too heavily on one pro-govt "expert" over another.
What a shame.
On a superficial level, that is.
In fact, the deeper issue here is that half the real debate was either poo-pooed or ignored outright.
Both sides of the so-called debate essentially argued for the same thing: more central power. One "expert" proposed Plan A of wealth redistribution while the other pushed Plan B. Neither argued against more govt intervention, or for a lesser govt role.
For goodness sake, the non-partisan level of civil debate (intervention v non; the individual v the state; etc.) is what the American Republic was founded around. What would Jefferson, Madison, et al. think of this intellectual battleground where two pro-intervention "experts" set the boundaries of debate over how the central govt shall control your health-care choices? Absurd! Unthinkable! Scandalous! Tar and feathers!
But it is indicative of a huge and systemic problem with the MSM. Sources always are govt officials, govt-funded/govt-connected "experts," or other pro-interventionists of some sort. There is no real incentive for them to propose policies which do not expand central power.
But will there ever be a "free and independent" press which famously, boldly proceeds against ever-increasing central power?
If the press is indeed a watchdog against encroachment of tyranny, then it is utterly useless and counter-effective when it only gives inches to pro-intervention sources. It more closely, then, resembles a lapdog.
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Fri 31 Dec 2010 at 11:02 PM
Dan, the free market model doesn't work with health care, and this has been shown many times from Taiwan to Canada, for a couple of simple reasons - the consumer cannot say no to the product when he needs it, the consumer can say no to the provider until he needs it.
This means the consumer has no leverage when it comes to setting price when he needs the product and the provider has no profit incentive to provide coverage to the consumer in need.
Thus the system breaks down as providers(insurance) and producers(hospitals) fight over who gets to skim the profits.
As has been pointed out multiple times the CONSERVATIVE solution is to make an individual mandate that requires everyone to seek coverage before they need it in exchange for providers to provide coverage for everyone when they need it.
And then you can do things like means testing and etc. to see where you can eliminate product waste and superfluous costs.
The bare minimum way of achieving this is a regulated market with open exchanges from which the consumer can pick from.
Below that, there is nothing. In the free market world, bad competitors crowd out the good ones and you get stagnant monopolies with a few islands of exception, such as the Mayo Clinics, in which they suppress individual profit motif for the sake of quality of care.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande
Most institutions are not so angelic, and the result is a market of under served consumers and overfed rent seekers.
As Delong quipped the other day:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/12/upon-what-meat-hath-our-financial-sector-fed-to-grow-so-great.html
"Our newly redrawn map of the U.S. economy shows another leading sector besides finance. The administration of our ill-designed health care system now costs us about 4% of GDP over and above the costs of administering health care in other comparable countries.
Do not get us wrong: we do not hate service industries. But most service industries produce something of value in return for their profits. Health care administration simply produces denials of coverage. Finance as currently construed simply produces portfolios for individuals that involve them bearing extraordinarily large and idiosyncratic risks that they had no idea they were bearing. There are two ways to make money in health care: (i) by providing people with valuable treatments that they are willing to pay for, and (ii) by collecting insurance premiums and finding some excuse not to pay them out when people get sick. There are two ways to make money in finance: (i) to find people who are willing to bear risks that they understand, selling them risks that offer attractive risk-return tradeoffs, and collecting a commission; and (ii) by selling people risks that they don't understand. It looks to us very much as though our modern health-care administration and financial sectors are good at the second but not the first."
That is the free market in practice, not on paper where it looks so beautifully sensible, like an MC. Escher staircase.
In the real world, free market babble always leads to millions falling off the market's edge - be they dollars or people, the market doesn't care.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 1 Jan 2011 at 11:03 PM
Back on the social security issue, we have to realize what the common wisdom of the (to borrow a term) Very Serious People is.
The first half hour of this video is instructive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HQUB9LtSJ0
It is the testimony of Richard Koo, Alan Meltzer, and Lawrence Mishel in front of the House Financial Services Committee.
Both Koo's and Mishel's testimonies are valuable and insightful, but Meltzer's is the most valuable for a different reason.
http://financialservices.house.gov/Media/file/hearings/111/Meltzer%207_22_10%20pm.pdf
Meltzer's is the one you are going to hear from the press, government, and business community in the coming months because, just like the two Johnathan's story pointed out, there is a preference for certain sources and certain perspectives to the exclusion of others.
And because the press and government receive their economic news from the business community (especially the republicans who were quoted as seeing their jobs as regulators as to "serve the banks") they get this Meltzerian perspective which places the blame for economic sluggishness not on the collapse in asset value, which they rigged, but in the "uncertainty" caused by possible government policies and and problematic government finances.
They are going to point at deficits and debt and say "Ooo ooo! Look! Uncertainty!" and if you suggest a raise in taxes to lower deficits "Uncertainty!" You can forget about regulation. One word. Starts with "Un" ends with "ertainty".
So what you will hear, from the business community which will filter into the press and politic, is that the economy is sluggish is because, from Meltzer, "Uncertainty is the enemy of business investment and expansion. The future is always uncertain, but the administration has added greatly to the costly and unforeseeable future."
The solution: "A program that begins to lift uncertainty and reduce debt and
deficits has a positive effect on private spending."
Reduce deficits? Cut spending? From where? *"Where the money is."
The boomers are soon going to retire and the government just renewed a budget busting tax cut. They are going to need to draw out of the Social Security trust fund which will mean either higher deficits or higher taxes. And, if you have either, people will start screaming "Uncertainty!"
The good news is Meltzer is wrong and if you study this Meltzer testimony and see why it is wrong, you will be able to counter "Uncertainty" claims with "Demand Collapse and Deleveraging" realities.
They will say the "government (municipal, state, and federal) does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem." and you will be able to say "Wrong. It has an economic problem. It has a private sector debts, worthless private assets, infrastructure desperately requiring investment, corrupt financial sector of the economy problem."
And then you can mention, if you want to see some real uncertainty, start talking about changing how the government plays with people's retirement benefits when their private retirement benefits have been taken to the cleaners.
*That one was Bernanke, not Meltzer
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 2 Jan 2011 at 03:40 AM
The debt ceiling madness begins:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_01/027341.php
And do you know who is responsible?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46430.html
"There was brief talk in the House Democratic Caucus on Tuesday night of tying an extension of the debt ceiling to the tax deal, to deprive the Republicans of that leverage. But that support crumbled in the face of White House lobbying and overwhelming Senate support for the deal. Obama, who gives in repeatedly to Republicans, turns out to be highly skilled at isolating Democrats.
Beltway Washington — the editorial writers, columnists, centrist policy organizations, Blue Dogs and, of course, the Obama administration and its Wall Street advisers — has become an echo chamber of bad advice.
Slaying the deficit gets top billing — generating a strong economic recovery is offstage. A smaller deficit is said to promote recovery by increasing confidence — though nobody can give a plausible explanation of the economics."
Nobody is going to know and understand what's going on if the press doesn't start getting in on this game and start reporting it. If the democrats wanted to protect social security, they could have included the debt limit raise in the Bush tax cut extension negotiations. The whitehouse lobbied against that knowing what the GOP would do next.
Someone needs to ask why.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 3 Jan 2011 at 10:46 PM