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the 'economic consensus' has been meaningfully wrong on the big issues for a long long time.

But that just makes it more important for economists to clearly explain their position. We'll never be able to see when they're wrong if they do the "on the one hand... on the other hand routine." Anyone who claims to be an expert should be obliged to behave like one - with confident, clear claims. The success and failure of these will be the judge.

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I am going to be bad and point out certain unpleasant details of the case I have brought up, which only happens to involve the largest item in the US federal budget and an awful lot of inaccurate and half-baked commentary. I do this because I think this is an example of "experts" not only misleading people, but doing so consciously, partly to satisfy a strongly entrenched norm to obey the misleading story of the day. I happen to know from personal conversation, that many of these experts know better in private discussion, but never admit this publicly.

So, how did we get into this absurd situation? I happen to think money and power lie behind it, surprise surprise, particulary very big and bipartisan Wall Street money, which gives the whole thing the establishment aura and patina that convinces established media bloviaters to prattle on and on about what really appears to be a nonexistent "crisis," with the "experts" arriving en masse to provide their various "solutions."

It goes back to 1997 when Wall Streeter Robert Rubin was Treasury Secretary under Dem prez, Clinton. That person appoints the board of the Social Security Administration, its Trustees, who issue these annual reports. Wall Street firms would love to have social security privatized, at least to some extent. We are talking billions of dollars a year, here serious money. So, Rubin's appointees came up with the projections that were crap that are still used today, "crisis!" eeeeek! etc. Of course Bush has supported privatization for ideological reasons since he first ran for Congress back in 1976, so his Treasury Secretaries have found it convenient to simply continue with what Rubin started, this bipartisan theme becoming so established that no respectable economist will publicly state what is known privately to pretty much all of them that have really looked at the subject, that these projections are pretty ridiculous, and that the probability that the system will even run a deficit anytime in the remote future is low. But it is so socially entrenched that one must say "there is a crisis" that every major economics adviser of every major Dem prez candidate agrees with this drivel, even though the Dem base does not want the system screwed with.

This is one of those cases where the supposedly dumb voters may be smarter, or at least more in tune with an honest assessment, than the supposed experts.

If you are reading this, Bryan, C., do you have any commment? (I realize, Bryan, that you do not like the social security system for ideological reasons, but that is another matter. It aint' broke, and it don't need no fixin'.)

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