The New Republic‘s Jonathan Chait effectively spells out what news outlets with a larger audience have so far only hinted at, if that, about the Social Security debate in Washington, “The consensus among the capital’s chattering classes holds that the Social Security debate primarily concerns the program’s solvency. Therefore, the questions center around political courage, and the greatest threat is that the parties will not agree on a solution. This consensus is wrong in every particular. In truth, the debate is fundamentally ideological. It does not lend itself to compromise.”
Early on, Chait points out the media’s resistance to the ideological storyline: “To the Washington establishment, the suggestion that conservatives essentially want to do away with Social Security is something close to a lunatic conspiracy theory. When a guest on ‘Meet the Press’ suggested as much, Tim Russert replied incredulously, “So you’re suggesting that private personal accounts are a secret plan to get rid of Social Security?”
But, as Chait argues, this “secret plan” has been an explicit goal of many conservatives for a long, long time. And it’s this goal that leads Chait to conclude, “There will be plenty of time in the future for shoring up Social Security or adding spiffy new savings vehicles. In the meantime, the crown jewel of the New Deal faces an existential threat. Defeating that threat is the task to which we must presently address ourselves.”
For the counter-argument, TNR tapped Gregory Mankiw, former chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and Harvard University economics professor.
If you haven’t noticed, the dollars that make up those Social Security checks haven’t been faring well as of late. Just try pricing out a trip to Europe and you’ll see that your cash is on its way to becoming Monopoly money. Robert J. Samuelson writes in this week’s Newsweek to let us all know that the significance of the dollar’s devaluing should be a little higher on all our “must know” lists.
Up front we learn the facts — that is, that the value of a dollar has been clobbered in the last few years — dropping 38 percent against the euro, 23 percent against the yen and 25 percent against the Canadian dollar. (Put another way, a set number of dollars will now buy three euros; just a few years ago, that same number of dollars could buy five euros.) But, it’s the backstory that Samuelson presents in a readable way. Simply, as he puts it, “For 15 years the American economy has been the engine for the world economy through ever-increasing trade and current-account deficits (the current account includes other overseas payments like travel and tourism).” Getting these trade imbalances in line would benefit everyone, Samuelson tells us, and “on paper”, it seems like a relatively easy task. But, surprise, global politics make the re-balancing a bit difficult.
In a piece that careens back-and-forth between one set of experts predicting doomsday scenarios of global economic collapse and another set of experts who shrug off such a possibility, we gradually deduce that in truth no one has a clue what’s going to happen. But one thing is for sure, says Samuelson:
America’s huge and expanding trade deficits have served as a narcotic for the rest of the world. As with all narcotics, resulting highs have been artificial and, to some extent, delusional to both the dealer and the addicts. The question now is whether everyone can go straight, before the addiction becomes self-destructive…To paraphrase former Treasury secretary John Connally: the dollar may be America’s currency, but it’s the world’s problem.
For a little perspective on an even grimmer matter, take a look at this week’s Time magazine for its harrowing profile of wounded — amputated, burned, mentally scarred — soldiers returning from Iraq. Nancy Gibbs provides an empathic introduction that at times approaches anger — albeit justified:
You have to stand a ways back, but from a certain angle these look like the lucky ones. In any other war, they would be dead, having bled to death on the battlefield or died in a hospital from wounds so grievous that their armor could not protect them and the doctors could not save them. In World War II, 1 in 3 wounded soldiers died; in Vietnam, 1 in 4. In the Iraq war, the rate is 1 in 8. As of last week, just over 1,500 U.S. military personnel had died in Iraq and 11,285 had been wounded.
And a little bit of the anger:
It is so much easier, of course, to call the U.S. wounded unlucky, the double and triple amputees maimed in a war that has not always gone as planned. If Kevlar and ceramic plates are the great lifesavers of modern warfare along with quick-clotting powders and ultrasound units that fit in backpacks, how many more lives and limbs might have been saved if the Humvees that were meant for transport in noncombat zones had been equipped with the armor necessary for a guerrilla war that has no front lines, no safe havens?
And finally, the Economist, the weekly reports that Hugo Chavez’s leftist government in Venezuela has begun throwing darts at local media for having the audacity to say what it wants. Chavez does have a legitimate bone to pick, says the Economist, as portions of the media did indeed work hard to drive him from power — but that alone doesn’t justify recent “social responsibility” laws that limit radio and television broadcasts. And it may get worse:
A new penal code, awaiting Mr Chvez’s signature, would increase the penalty for defamation to 12 months in jail and eliminate the presumption of innocence. To “cause panic” by spreading “false information” by any means, including e-mail, would carry a sentence of up to five years.
Even the foreign press has now found itself a target including, as we are told in the Economist‘s typical pseudo-third person voice, the Economist‘s correspondent him-or-herself. And thanks in no small part to President Bush’s troubled relationship with Chavez, American journalists are now marked targets in Venezuela. Information Minister Andres Izarra has even accused the U.S. State Department of funding anti-Chavez reports. Asked to produce evidence for that claim, Izarra responded, “Don’t be surprised if later on we find documents.”
Mr. Izarra, meet Mr. Burkett.
–Thomas Lang
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.