Some of us expect intelligent commentary from Bill Moyers. Well, we didn't get it today. Instead Moyers gives a whole array of deceptive statistics. The worst of course is combining the projected shortfalls from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of these liabilities stem from a projected explosion of health care costs. As BTP readers have heard me say many times, if health care costs follow this trajectory, then the economy will be devastated even if we shut down Medicare and Medicaid completely. Alternatively, if we get our health care costs more in line with costs in every other country in the world, there is no big problem. The point is that we have to fix our health care system, not gut Social Security or even Medicare and Medicaid. The second major sin in the Moyers piece is to report the projected deficits in trillions of dollars. This sounds very scary, which is presumably the intention. Well, this should be taken as seriously as if Moyers were giving his talk in a Halloween mask -- he wants to scare the audience. The honest way to talk about these numbers is express them in a way that is meaningful to the audience. This means expressing them relative to the projected size of the economy. As can be readily discovered from examining the Social Security trustees report, the $4.6 trillion dollar projected deficit through the 75 year planning period can be expressed as 0.7 percent of projected income. For anyone who feels the need to add in the projected costs after 2080, assuming the country never changes the program (are you on drugs?), the $13.4 trillion deficit over the infinite horizon can be expressed as 1.3 percent of GDP. In other words, the additional tax revenue that will be needed to pay every penny of projected Social Security benefits through the year 2080 is equal to 70 cents of every hundred dollars of projected income. The tax increase that would be needed to cover the shortfall for all future time is equal to $1.30 of hundred dollars of projected income. Let's hope that Mr. Moyers takes off his Halloween mask and returns to focusing on the country's real problems.
--Dean Baker
