Slow Train Coming

Actually, it appears to be accelerating. The train is the impending insolvency of the large entitlement programs. The news today: Social Security. A summary of the latest trustee report (as presented in the Christian Science Monitor): The trust funds that support Social Security will run dry in 2033 — three years earlier than previously projected — the government [...]

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Krugman and “Imagine There’s No Welfare…”

Paul Krugman (NYT) turns to the article that we have been discussing on Pileus (here and here) and Monty addressed in an insightful post on Ace of Spades.  Krugman has never really acknowledged the reality of a looming entitlement crisis (indeed, it often appears that there can be no program large enough, no deficit large [...]

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Imagine There’s No Welfare, Its Easy if You Try…

A few days back I posted (here) on an article in the NYT that focused on recipients of welfare (usually Social Security, Medicaid, disability) who are dependent on the state but also seem without options. My post ended on a somber note: “the expansion of the safety net has been accompanied by changes in social norms [...]

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The Social Safety Net. What are the Alternatives?

Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert Gebeloff had an interesting piece in the NYT this weekend entitled “Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It.”  An early quote provides the context:  The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary [...]

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A Note on Entitlements

The WSJ has an editorial today entitled “Entitlement Nation“ in which it outlines America’s political history that has led to so many millions of us today receiving, even living off, payments of money, goods, or services from the government. The numbers are shocking: “50.5 million Americans are on Medicaid, 46.5 million are on Medicare, 52 million [...]

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What About the Social Security Trust Fund? Depends on When (Not Who) You Ask

In an interview with CBS News, the President has issued some stark predictions of what will happen should Congress fail to extend the debt ceiling. “I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do [...]

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Throwing Grandma Off the Cliff

In an interesting piece in Politicotoday, Alex Isenstadt argues that GOP plans to reform Medicare could open the door to the Democrats retaking the House in 2012 (something no one would have predicted following the results of the 2010 midterms). According to Isenstadt, the Democrats are in possession of a “silver bullet.” the GOP’s Medicare [...]

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