Facts

Mitch Berg wonders why the same bloggers who said there were no WMDs (This is an over-simplification. There was a joke on our side that went "We know Saddam has WMDs. We still have the receipts." We said that the inspectors should be allowed to do their jobs. We also said that Bush was over-hyping the case that Iraq had WMDs, particularly nuclear weapons.) are now saying there's no Social Security crisis. Counterintuitively, Mitch's point is that these bloggers were wrong about the WMDs, and are therefore wrong about Social Security.

In reality, the opposite is true.

You see, on the left, we use these things called "facts."

These "facts" allow us to draw conclusions about the state of the world. Using facts, our conclusions about the world are more correct, more often than not, than those conclusions drawn without facts.

For example, when the Bush administration starting hyping Iraq's WMDs, we used facts to determine that their analysis was probably faulty, or at the very least overblown. We also noted the fact that (in large part due to Bush's military pressure) the weapons inspectors were back at work in Iraq. Using these facts, we concluded that a war was not necessary to destroy Saddam's banned weapons. We were right.

In the case of Social Security, we have used facts to determine that the best educated guess is that Social Security won't run out of money until about 2050. Furthermore, we have looked at facts from the past to determine that the date when Social Security is scheduled to run out of money has been receding into the future for a decade. In other words, these facts tell us that the "crisis" with Social Security is not only far away, but the health of Social Security is improving.

We also use "common sense guidelines" to help us avoid catastrophes. For example, Daniel Davies presented a simple set of rules to follow to avoid projects run by morons:

1. Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.
2. Fibbers' forecasts are worthless.
3. The Vital Importance of Audit.

These rules apply equally well to the Iraq war as to Social Security. We know that Bush is telling lies about Social Security (let's be plain here: telling younger workers Social Security won't be there for them when it is projected to last until nearly 2050 is a lie.). Therefore, privitization is not a good idea. We know that his administration and its conservative cohorts in the right wing think tanks are fibbers. Therefore, their forecasts are worthless. We know the Bush administration has a problem with auditing and accountability. Therefore, we need not trust them with this multi-trillion dollar responsibility.

I hope this helps clear things up.