The Moynihan Neolegacy

Oh dear.

I had thought Dr. Baker and I agree about the ¡Smash Social Security! gentry and neogentry, but that was before I saw

"The article also implies that it WOULD be reasonable to cut Social Security benefits to finance other parts of the government. This WOULD mean describing the payroll tax as a "Social Security" tax even though the money was being used to finance the war in Afghanistan or other expenditures. It is unlikely that this WOULD be a popular position."

Three ‘woulds’ in a row there, you see, and only the last of them warrantable by my prior understanding of the situation. The first two are to be classified firmly under "have already." Guided, I presume, by the late, and fathomlessly cynical, Neocomrade Senator D. P. Moynihan, our Betters have already taken their loot and disbursed it on "other expenditures." Now that pensions cost more yearly than they bring in, naturally the Betters desire to terminate that racket and replace it with a different one. Any arrangement that has the Great and Good financin’ the Bad Poor -- rather than vice-versâ, as decency demands and all history illustrates -- is not merely unreasonable, it is "irrationality on stilts," as Mr. Bentham might say.

Pretendin’ to do something of the Robin Hood sort -- or more exactly, pretendin’ that one will do it thirty years down the pike was delightfully Moynihanesque, but to assume that the Guide of All Possessive Humanity intended the Sherrif of Nottingham and his golf buddies to be out of pocket for even a single day underestimates the neocleverness of guidance seriously. ’Tis a great pity that we can never know exactly how Dan Paddy himself proposed to handle the inevitable peripateia.

The beneficiaries of Guidance are doin’ remarkably well, it seems to me, although of course it is still very early days, smashwise. Just to get those misleading ‘would’s out of a malignant lefty and paupersymp like Dean Baker is a triumph in itself. Moreover, that third ‘would’ is correct enough: hardly anybody on the ‘popular’ team sees through the DPM flimflam yet. Naturally I keep hoping that (1) some effective rabblerouser will point out that ‘our’ old-age money has already been misappropriated, whereupon (2) We, the Rabble of the United States of America, will arise as one man . . . &c. &c. A dream fit for the Silly Season, no doubt.

In previous articles, Dr. Baker has needled the Moynihanophile Classes a little bit about about placin’ their Uncle Sam in a ("merely technical") status of default. This is great fun for everybody educated expensively enough to have learned about their Gen. Hamilton’s rigid notions of the creditor’s obligation. Nowadays, though, most of the Betters get their history from Master Glenn Beck or thereabouts, and it is pointless to pick on Betters for not livin’ up to an antique Federalist rectitude of which they will scarcely even have heard.

In 2010, who can more realistically be taken as the very model of a modern Fiscal Selfservative than Neocomrade P. G. Peterson, Freelord Concord? And it just happens that His Responsibility was quoted in the McClatchy piece, as follows:

This week the International Monetary Fund urged the U.S. to cut future Social Security benefits, among other painful steps that it said were necessary to avoid unsustainable debt and an increased risk of global economic instability. "If we could address Social Security reform," said Peter Peterson, the founder and chairman of a foundation that works for federal debt reduction, "it would provide a much-needed confidence builder with our valued foreign lenders ... so they don't lose faith that we can manage our own fiscal affairs."

I don’t think Dan Paddy would have taken quite that line. His own neotericities in the foreign-policy line tended, as I recall, to insist that it is for the lesser breeds without to win confidence from Wunnerful US, exactly the opposite of his freelordship’s approach.

On the other hand, Mr. Moynihan must approve from the warm downbelow of the Petersonian jive: his freelordship almost says (does he not?) in so many words that a mere verbal promise or outward show of "Social Security reform" will reassure the heathen with too much money on their hands than Sam will default on mere domestic obligations first before expecting them to take any haircuts.[1]

Happy days.


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[1] It enhances the general moynihanicity of the performance that Freelord Concord is almost certainly worried most about Fedguv obligations to neofolks like himself located much closer to home than Cathay.

Also fun to notice is his freelordship’s solemn insinuation that the Voice of the I.M.F. is the voice of the whole human race, admonishing wayward Sam from the outside. In fact, the Voice comes straight out of pretty much the same pseudo- / para- / quasi-academic Tanks of Thought that Mr. Lightman had recourse to in quest of quotations. Maybe your occasional Gnome of Zürich gets a word in edgewise occasionally, but for practical purposes it is all Yanks all the time at the ‘International’ Monetary Fund. (Is it not?)

In the long run, the Betters at Beijing may not much care for being made to play Charlie McCarthy to his freelordship’s Edgar Bergen like this.

Obviously I am no economist, so let me ask Dr. Baker to assess the possibility that the Chinese might also like the idea of lots of elderly barbarians buying their manufactures with (unreformed) SS checks.

But Ricardo knows best.