Radio Doug

Tom Lehman uswa12 at lorainccc.edu
Thu Jan 21 09:26:07 PST 1999


Dear Doug,

During congressional testimony and in response to a question asked by Cleveland Congressman Dennis Kunich, Commissioner Apfel stated, that the bonds held by the trust fund were currently paying on average around 7% interest.

The radical from the waco institute probably thinks a cola is somthing you drink.

Btw, I'm sure that Dr. Thayer means well.

Your email pal,

Tom L.

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Tom Lehman wrote:
>
> >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



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