From Henry Aaron, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, comes a pop quiz that’s fun to take and tests our assumptions and presumptions about the hot button topics of our day—government spending, Social Security, and healthcare spending. It’s a good check-up for reporters and for anybody who cares about this stuff.
Ready?
Question 1: The federal government is spending a larger share of national income then at any time since World War II—True or False?
Question 2: The federal government is collecting a larger share of national income in taxes than at any time since World War II—True or False?
Question 3: Social Security is currently running a deficit—True or False?
Question 4: Healthcare spending is outpacing the growth of income—True or False?
OK? The answers:
All are false. Surprised? Aaron says he suspects large majorities of Americans would answer “true” to at least one of these questions, and many might answer true to all of them. False—or at least incomplete—messages circulate constantly, and the press helps transmit them. Persistent special interests have a way of making you believe what’s not true. But facts are facts. If you want to know more about why the answers are false, Aaron offers explanations and context in his post at the Brookings website.
We have to hand it to Aaron. This might capture peoples’ attention. In his blog post, he makes the case that the “misinformation that stands behind the incorrect answers to these questions is doing the nation vast harm,” and he gives some examples.
Aaron also invokes an oh-so-relevant quote attributed to the late New York Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, known for a clever turn of phrase. Said Moynihan: “It isn’t what you don’t know that hurts you. It’s what you know that isn’t so.”
On Social Security, the persistent myth of the Greedy Geezer, which has raced through the media and helped frame an arguably harmful kids vs. seniors meme, is a good example of exactly what Moynihan meant.
Related content:
This is all only narrowly true and is misleading. State and local tax burdens are higher than ever, and the federal government has been the driver, thanks to the use of matching funds (Medicare, which is eating up state budgets, is the most obvious example), and unfunded mandates. The concerns about Social Security, with its unfunded liabilities (a practice which would put a private insurer in the hoosegow, to the applause of CJR and like-minded worshippers of statism) are about its future. To the average FICA payer, the Social Security tax is as high as it has ever been, and deficits are still visible. That's the real point.
The old chestnut that Lieberman uses to quote DC mandarin Aaron (domiciled in the richest metro area in the US, according to the Census, I guess because of that innovative tech sector or those oil fields) quoting D.P. Moynihan was most famously used by candidate Mondale in his folksy (make that 'folksy') attacks on Reagan in the 1984 campaign. But Fritz attributed the quote to Will Rogers.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Sun 17 Mar 2013 at 07:18 PM