As a result of its cost-saving merger of the editorial and news section, the Post continued to hype its push for cutting Social Security and Medicare in the news section. Among other things, it described the Peter G. Peterson Foundation as an organization which "advocates for federal fiscal responsibility." It is so nice that the Post likes the Peterson G. Foundation, but serious newspapers keep their words of praise in the editorial section. (For the record, the Center for Economic and Policy Research is an organization exists to "promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives." We have never once been described that way in a news article.) The Post also tells readers that: "Absent dramatic action or an economic miracle, trillion-dollar deficits are projected to persist throughout the coming decade, by some estimates, and the bills are forecast to run headlong into the skyrocketing costs of caring for the retiring baby boom generation." Did everyone catch that? This statement is based on "some estimates." Well, we all should take some estimates very seriously. Finally, this article never once notes that the baby boom cohorts have just lost trillions of dollars in housing and stock wealth with the collapse of the housing bubble and the stock market plunge. This is to the enormous benefit of younger generations who will be able to buy homes and stock at huge discounts compared to the prices they were looking at just two years ago. It is astounding that a newspaper could have a piece devoted to questions of generational equity and never even note this enormous transfer of wealth from older generations to younger ones.
--Dean Baker
