Krugman hits the nail on the head. The Powell-Cheney fiasco was hysterical and the privatization debate is a joke–and a pretty funny one. However, Tapped played a fun game a week ago and bet that Kaus and Sullivan would have coniptions over a pretty damn inocuous passage, and I’ll take shot today.
This passage:
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Is it inaccurate to say that personal accounts equal privatization? We could argue on the merits. Under the Bush plan, a worker’s personal account reflects any gains or losses on the stocks it represents. When risks and rewards accrue entirely to the individual, isn’t that privatization?
But wait, we can do better. The push to convert Social Security into a system of personal accounts has been led by the Cato Institute. The Bush plan emerged directly from Cato’s project on the subject, several members of Mr. Bush’s commission on Social Security reform had close Cato ties, and much of the commission’s staff came straight from Cato. You can read all about Cato’s role on the special Web site the institute set up, socialsecurity.org.
And what’s the name of the Cato project to promote personal accounts? Why, the Project on Social Security Privatization, of course.”
Let’s start the countdown to numerous complaints about how Bush has always varied just a teenie-weenie bit from the CATO line and so Krugman is unfair and part of the Rainesian conspiracy…and the NEA is involved somehow.
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