On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 05:36:34 -0500, Erik Reuter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > * JDG ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > > Republicans pretty well kept that from happening.) Now, paying down > > the national debt would only really have benefited Social Security to > > the extent that the overall ratio of US debt to GDP might become so > > overly burdensome in the near future as to prevent the government from > > borrowing to cover revenue shortfalls in Social Security. After all, > > nothing done in the current year can affect nominal budget *deficits* > > in future years. > > Wrong. Amazing you can get this so wrong, being a government employee > and claiming to be an economist. > > You have heard of interest? Fiscal 2004 the interest on the debt > outstanding was more than $321 billion. (58% of the national debt is > held by the public, so a rough guess would be that 58% of that interest > is paid to non-government creditors). That is billions of dollars that > would otherwise be available to spend on things like social security, or > to, I don't know, REDUCE THE BUDGET DEFICIT IN FUTURE YEARS! > > http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm
I will add my criticisms along with Erik's. >Touche' on "pyramid-scheme" being a pejorative term for Social Security. >Of course, I would make the argument that the difference is that >"pyramid-scheme" is an *accurate* term for Social Security, whereas >"trickle-down economics" is purely pejorative but ehhh...... point taken. "Trickle-down economics" is a more accurate description - that is the rationale used for tax cuts to the wealthy. It was after focus-group testing showed the huge negatives of this term that Frank Lundz has banned this term from conservative discourse and instructed the recipients of talking-points to denounce it vigorously as pejorative. "Pyramid scheme" is favored by the conservatives. I dislike it because until recently it was assumed that the government would be run by fairly honorable men not out to fleece the public to support their friends and then default, at least in the crowd I run around in. If Bush succeeds in defaulting on the government debt held by the Social Security trust fund than it will have been a "pyramid scheme." Lundz does a lot of testing to reframe the words used in political discourse and the GOP and conservative columnists follow in lockstep, sometimes with humorous results if you are aware of the past discourse which most of the public is not. "Privatization" was the preferred term by the GOP, until the directive came down that it was now focus group testing horribly. "Private accounts" became the preferred term for all of two months before the preferred term became "personal accounts." Most conservatives use the preferred terms not because they are on the talking-points mailing list but because suddenly the language the TV and radio heads and politicians they follow change. This reframing is used less effectively by the Democrats because they are not an organized party following the "1984" model on language. Hell, they are not really an organized party, they're Democrats. One of the longest running instances of reframing is the conservative protest over the use of the term democracy for the American system of government. If "democracy," associated with Democrats, is always denounced and restated that the United States is a "republic," associated with Republicans, it is a point for their side. Who is right, they both are, but it doesn't matter as much as the language you use reshapes the arguments. Gary Denton Easter Lemming Liberal News Digest - I think Brin was on to something in 'Earth' in suggesting the right to vote be dependent upon subscribing to some opposing viewpoint media. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
