>I listened to Doug debate the radical from the waco Cato Institute last
>night. Doug did an excellent job.
Thanks. I wish I'd had the details behind his assertion that today's workers will get a negative return from their SS taxes. I suspect they use preposterously high real interest rates to deflate the value of future benefits, which is what Kotlikoff did with his fraudulent generational accounting (6% real rate to figure the present value of a government benefit with no default risk). But since I didn't know the details I couldn't challenge him on it.
>I got a real kick out of Doug telling the radical, "I'm here to debate
>the facts contained in the trustees report, not the outcomes of some
>focus group."
I had a second-string Cato person on my radio show a year or two ago to discuss social security; she was much much worse than Michael Tanner, my sparring partner yesterday - she had no idea what she was talking about and just repeated the same stock phrases over & over ("you don't want a government bureaucrat managing your retirement portfolio, do you?"). Tanner was a bit better than she was, but still couldn't resist the focus group temptation.
Doug