I don’t have time to write a long post responding to David Brooks’ latest compendium of misleading banalities. The short version is: it’s not some irrational fear of “the market” driving my opposition. It’s the very rational understanding that the forces driving Social Security “reform” have no interest in reform whatsoever. You’ve got the Grover Norquist destroy-government wing allied with the conservatarian free-marketeers, both of whom would dearly love to wipe out the last vestiges of the New Deal. (Some chucklehead online recently suggested that Social Security reform began with Clinton. Clinton flirted with a lot of bad right wing ideas, but anyone who claims that he was the one who started this ball rolling is either lying or shockingly misinformed.) It’s not that I don’t trust “the market.” It’s that I don’t trust the “reformers.” And for very good reason.
BY TOM TOMORROW