**** I'm sorry that Kotlikoff and Burns were so miffed by my review that they felt compelled to attack my motives rather than deal with the substance of what I said. Maybe that's why they think that I did the same thing—that I accused them of "hawking" Social Security privatization, when no such accusation appears in my article.**** (New York Review of Books, April 7, 2005, p. 85 -- Reply to Kotlikoff & Burns.)
This is precisely the point I and others (particularly Miles) made in a recent thread on lbo-talk.
Focusing on motive is almost always a deliberate attempt to avoid the actual subject matter at issue. It is intellectually and politically unethical -- besides being simply stupid.
Carrol