Silliness from Angry Bear

I like Angry Bear's posts on housing a lot. I am less impressed with his rants on other things. The latest batch, sadly, has no housing in it, so I'll comment on these other posts.

Angry Bear mocks Cato's list of "propaganda" around social security. Now, Cato is easy to mock, as are all idealogues, but Angry Bear is being ideological here as well. They key point is that since SS is a pay-as-you-go system, as the ratio of workers to retirees shrinks, you either need to run deficits, cut benefits, and/or raise taxes to meet your obligations. This is Cato's point, and any serious discussion of social security needs to grapple with this essential choice. Comments like

#9, #10, and #17 only document that the U.S. has a lot of people and that we have a demographic phenomena known as the retiring of the baby boomers. Is the Cato Institute advocating we get rid of some of the elderly as their Social Security solution?

just make you look like you don't have a clue because it is *precisely* this demographic shift that will force us to 1) run deficits, 2) cut benefits and/or 3) raise taxes. Or maybe Angry Bear does nor understand how elderly populations impact retirement programs?

In other news, Angry Bear was impressed by Gladwell's lame article on healthcare in the US. Once he takes a break from calling non-elite Americans stupid for not being angry at the current system, I hope he will discuss how people don't brush and floss regularly because they don't have health insurance(?) The US has poor health care because people excercise less and have worse diets that people on other countries. I don't see how subsidized insurance, care rationed by queue, and fewer drugs for future generations will make this better.