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Wednesday, 19 January 2005 |
I listened to an NPR bit on the way home debating the urgency of social security reform. The Bush administration says social security will go broke by 2042. The opposing viewpoint notes that by 2048 only the social security trust fund will be empty and 75% of benefits can be paid out of current tax receipts.
One perspecitive is a crisis, another a far off shortfall (one thing neither side talked about was all the other stuff funded by social security taxes...). As any economist will tell you, predicting anyting more than a few years out amounts to wanton speculation. If the Social Security Administration predicts a 25% shortfall in its ability to pay benefits more than 40 years from now, I'd say we're in pretty good shape. Small adjustments now can mitigate big problems later.
It occured to me the approach of the administration to this issue reveals a pattern - what I can the "if I ran the world" approach. The approach is characterised by an unwavering (irrational?) faith that if everything worked the way you think it should all the problems would go away.
This mode of thought characterises the administration's approach to Iraq, gay marriage, taxes, education, tort reform, and security. Opinion and intuition are an important part of the political process, but to ignore alternatives to and the results of your decisions amounts to policy based on superstition.
The result is a focus on policy relevant to the policy maker, not the nation (gay marriage, social security reform), and prefabricated solutions looking for a rationale (the war in Iraq, migrating social security to private accounts). This irrational perspective gives us incomprehensible gems like coallitions of the willing, working hard at hard work, and an endless supply of reasons for pre-emptive war.
The policy of pre-emptive policy uses the example of the few to inductively campain for the policy of the many. A few cases of legals abuses mandate sweeping tort reform (which magically solves a lot of healthcare problems along the way) and tax cuts are a fiscal cure all. The body of evidence is irrelevant, policy is a matter of evangelism not rational prioritization, discourse, and compromise.
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