Down and Down He Goes...

...round and round he goes
In a spin, loving the spin....

Paul--White Magic--Krugman, is an old-fashioned kinda guy:

resident Bush isn't trying to reform Social Security. He isn't even trying to "partially privatize" it. ....the goal, as with his tax cuts, is to undermine the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt.

....it's foolish to imagine some sort of widely acceptable compromise with Mr. Bush about Social Security. Moderates and liberals want to preserve the America F.D.R. built. Mr. Bush and the ideological movement he leads, although they may use F.D.R.'s image in ads, want to destroy it.

But, old-fashioned is no qualification for an economist. Social Security being 19th century technology--like the horse and buggy--imported from Bismarck's Germany via FDR's New Deal in the 1930s.

Since then, we've split the atom, invented jet engines, sent men to the moon and back, developed bar codes that allowed the creation of the modern retail superstore, and have computerized and internet-ized such simple tasks as writing letters, and visiting the library.

Yet, the author of Ricardo's Difficult Idea can't seem to grasp that his own work on international trade can be applied to a nation's pension system.