Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?
Update: seemingly not
Update: Oh yeah!
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Good ideas do not usually need lots of lies told about them
Old friend-o-the-blog Michael Pollak, in comments to the Krugmalanched post, questions whether this sonorous maxim is actually true. Specifically, I think we can all agree a) that Social Security in the USA is a good idea and b) that it's a pay-as-you-go scheme and the "trust fund", "lockbox" accounting for it is a heap of bullshit that has caused confusion without end ever since the inception of the scheme.
D^2D is currently in the market for weaselly explanations of how this isn't really a counterexample, properly construed, because at present the management is not really coming up with any. I'd note that the UK's National Insurance system more or less admitted many years ago that the "insurance" element was a pack of lies and that NI contributions were a tax, without terrible consequences. But the question at issue is; would it have been politically possible for these schemes to have been launched without the fund accounting fiction, and if so, why weren't they?
this item posted by the management 10/02/2008 03:42:00 AM
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