Projections show that the combined cost of Medicare, Medcaid, and maintaining the roads and sidewalks in front of the Washington Post will increase by more than 8 percentage points of GDP by 2050. Clearly we cannot afford to maintain the roads and sidewalks. When will politicians have the courage to cut the budget for maintaining the roads and sidewalks in front of the Washington Post? Yes, David Broder did the old Medicare and Social Security trick again. (Projections show that Medicare's costs will explode over the next 40 years, the projected increase in Social Security spending is about the same as over the last forty years.) By the way, one of the "prominent non-aligned" economists who provided the background wisdom for Mr. Broder's article was David Lereah, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors and the author of the 2005 bestseller, Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?
--Dean Baker
