Saturday, March 22, 2014

Passing the Torch?  Let's Hope Not
Michael Hiltzik, columnist for the LA Times, takes Abby Huntsman, next generation talking head on MSNBC’s The Cycle, to task for replicating (however clumsily) older generation rants designed to mislead the public, in this case about the solvency of Social Security. 


This is a good illustration of how one can be wrong without lying, which is much more common in politics, since straight-out lying is usually the ineffective bumbling of someone without political skills.  Harry Frankfurt’s brilliant (and short) essay, OnBullshit, drives this point home powerfully.

Hiltzik notes that Abby Hunstman’s claim that “the system will be bankrupt by the time you and I are actually eligible to get these benefits. … Would you rather have 80 percent of what you have today, or nothing at all?” are not shared by leaders on either side of the aisle, and are designed to be fundamentally misleading.

“Where Huntsman got this idea is a mystery because no one who understands the program, from progressive supporters of Social Security to its conservative critics, says anything like that.

The most dire projections of the program’s future say that “doing nothing about it” — no benefit cuts, no tax increases — will leave the program still able to pay 75 percent to 80 percent of scheduled benefits. Not “nothing at all.” And that 75 percent to 80 percent would still be much more per month 75 years from now than retirees get today.”

The basic pattern of politics is an ongoing struggle to expand the scope of some conflicts and contract the scope of others.  Elites struggle with each other to displace one conflict with another on the public agenda or reframing how we think and talk about a conflict on the agenda.


This is a struggle to attract the attention of selected constituencies, because mobilizing them is expected to impact the outcome of conflicts…in this case, conflict over Social Security Reform (and by extension, mute and ignore conflicts kept off the agenda).  Let's hope HItzik's more data-driven reframing of the conflict prevails.

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