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.
No comments:
Post a Comment