Media Co-optation
Next time you fill up your car with gasoline, ask the young attendant if he or she expects to receive Social Security benefits in the distant future, perhaps 30 or 40 years from now. Typically the answer will be no. Anti-entitlement critics have already done their job. They’ve co-opted media reporting so successfully for the last two decades that most young people today believe critics' prognostications of imminent entitlement funding collapse.
News media have joined the entitlement critics’ propaganda machine, sometimes forsaking journalistic balance while printing shocking, unsubstantiated and misleading articles designed to provoke fear and anger among readers.
So the critics warn us: in 2007 Medicare began paying more in benefits than the program receives in income through payroll deductions. Social Security will take in less than it pays in 2017.
The nation’s “unfunded liabilities” — the money needed by the federal government to pay for all its promises to retirees, federal employees, military families and disadvantaged groups — will reach a mind-boggling $52 trillion by mid-century. Keep in mind that the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007 was $13.8 trillion. Thus, assuming no growth or contraction in the GDP a few decades from now, it would take 3.8 years of income derived from all the goods and services produced and sold by all the companies and individuals in this country simply to pay for the promises made to retirees and other dependents over the course of the next 40 years.
Those who are preaching economic hell and damnation are perhaps at heart well-meaning citizens, committed to their beliefs. But their beliefs are just that: improvable predictions about the future. The depth of their commitment and all the implied values that swirl around their numbers — the zealotry embedded in their messages — makes their anti-entitlement crusade an ideology – an ism. Call it anti-entitlementism.
They are asking Americans to suspend disbelief that any mortals can truly predict the future with accuracy, especially 40 years into the future... and especially predictions made by economists with an agenda.
Steven Mihm, an assistant professor of economic history at the University of Georgia, proposes an interesting observation about predictions made by economists:
“Recessions are signal events in any modern economy. And yet remarkably, the profession of economics is quite bad at predicting them. A recent study looked at 'consensus forecasts' (the predictions of large groups of economists) that were made in advance of 60 different national recessions that hit around the world in the '90s: in 97 percent of the cases, the study found, the economists failed to predict the coming contraction a year in advance. On those rare occasions when economists did successfully predict recessions, they significantly underestimated the severity of the downturns. Worse, many of the economists failed to anticipate recessions that occurred as soon as two months later.”
If economists have been woefully inadequate at predicting recessions just a few months before they strike, how much credence should the American public place in their predictions for 30, 40 or 50 years from now?
Yet, those who feel they have the clearest view of an economically disastrous future have been gaining traction in recent years. The list of entitlement doomsayers is growing as the Baby Boomer Generation teeters perilously into the years when their leading members are becoming eligible for these benefits. The short list includes the Cato Institute, the Concord Coalition, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and Americans for Generational Equity.
I don't buy into the philosophical premise of socialist insecurity. I am sorry I can't be as quippy with the bigger problem of Medicare.
Why do I owe you a retirement? Why didn't you plan for one? Why do I owe you health care? Why are you "entitled" to the fruits of my labor? I am not talking about you as a person. I am talking about three generations of Americans that thought it was a good idea to subsidize their collective retirements and health care with the work of the young.
The math might have worked when you have 13 workers for every retiree, but your "free love/no baby" lifestyles of the 60's and 70's have created the demographic trap of 2 workers for every retiree over the next 20 years.
Don't worry we will let you bleed the system dry for the next 20-30 years while you exercise your creativity in coming up with a non-solution. "Entitlement" does not need a solution it needs an expiration date. If I have to suck it up and pay for your retirement w/ FICA and my own with savings for the next 30 years, so be it. At least I will go to my grave knowing I left the world a better and a freer place for my children and grandchildren.
Posted by: Brian Mitchell | August 22, 2008 at 09:15 AM
Yes, we're all familiar with the "I'll be rich in my old age because I'll plan ahead" theory. However, often times life has a different plan in spite of your best efforts.
Clearly you've never experienced a life-threatening illness or seen a family member's substantial savings lost in long-term chronic care. The fact is, historically Americans don't save enough for their retirements and even those that do can face savings-busting surprises. It's called the vicissitudes of life.
If Social Security and Medicare go belly-up it will only be because your generation has drank from the anti-entitlement Kool-Aid you've been served for years now and are convinced life will treat you so much better than the generations before you. Good luck with that.
Back to the point of the original post...IOUSA is the latest in the billion dollar anti-entitlement campaign launched by mult-billionair Pete Peterson. Entitled to Know blogs about the movie and Peterson's group here: www.ncpssm.org/entitledtoknow
Posted by: wrightk | August 22, 2008 at 09:33 AM