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March 22, 2005
Media Matters For Inaccuracy
I recently came across some pretty nifty inconsistencies at the bag of laughs called Media Matters. MM criticized Representative Clay Shaw for describing the Social Security shortfall with the constant dollar total $26 trillion. MM claimed that the “‘constant dollar’ figure is vastly inflated”, andThe Social Security trustees estimate the true 75-year shortfall at a more modest $3.7 trillion. This so-called “present value” estimate is more accurate because it represents how much money would have to be added to the system today to render it solvent until 2078.Funny, but if a present value estimate is more accurate, then why doesn’t MM use it to describe the transition costs?
An official White House outline of Bush's proposal admits that partial privatization will cost $754 billion in its first ten years, through 2015. But this estimate is misleadingly low since under this proposal, private accounts are not fully phased in until the last five years of the ten-year window, and the administration did not provide cost estimates for subsequent decades. Using the same assumptions as the administration, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculated that the proposal would cost $4.9 trillion through 2028.The figures used in that paragraph are cumulative totals, just like the $26 trillion figure that MM decries. Had MM expressed the transition cost as a “more accurate” present value estimate, it would be considerably lower than $4.9 trillion. I wonder, why didn’t MM criticize OMB and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for not using the present value estimate? Could it be that MM wants smaller figures when describing the Social Security shortfall but larger ones when talking about the transition costs? UPDATE: I almost forgot! The second MM piece was posted only two hours after the first—and both by the same author. Guess it’s hard to keep our arguments consistent when so much time elapses, eh?
Posted by David Hogberg at March 22, 2005 7:03 PM | Print
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