Ah. It becomes clearer and clearer why nobody in the administration who knew anything about Social Security substance was trotted out the week before last to provide details on Bush’s endorsement of Pozen’s “progressive price indexing.” The numbers are ugly.

Jason Furman has the details. And they are indeed ugly.

But Mr. Bush isn’t calling for small sacrifices now. Instead, he’s calling for zero sacrifice now, but big benefit cuts decades from now - which is exactly what he says will happen if we do nothing. Let me repeat that: to avert the danger of future cuts in benefits, Mr. Bush wants us to commit now to, um, future cuts in benefits.

What columnist is more deserving of a Pulitzer?

President Bush on Thursday used a format he does not like to discuss issues he cannot resolve in hopes that he can sell the American people on policies most say they don’t want.

Given the highly effective Democratic scare-mongering on this issue in past elections, one can see why the Bush crowd might think it needed to preempt this criticism. But to trumpet it in a manner which to my ear screams ‘everyone else gets the shaft’?

Needlenose noticed this too, but he has a good comeback which neatly ties the two elements together:

From the Department of Accidentally Opened Doors: The’ message to seniors should be: “Look how far George Bush and his party are from your values. They think you can be bought — that you’ll sell out your kids and grandkids as long as they don’t personally cut your benefits.”

And there I was thinking he was just into the ‘I am a camera’ thing. But no, this is hard-hitting stuff.

And, alternately, if you believe our economy will have the kind of growth needed to earn the predicted returns, then there’s no Social Security crisis anyway, because that amazing economic growth fill fund any possible future long-run shortfall.

The Carpetbagger Report: Playing by White House rules, Bush is bankrupting the government: It’s always been a ridiculous claim, but using White House definitions, the system will be “bankrupt” when liabilities outnumber assets. Social Security, in other words, will be bankrupt — in Bush’s mind — because it may be unable to meet all of its obligations at some point down the road.

And, as the great Carpetbagger notes, if you define ‘bankruptcy’ as ‘cash flow out exceeds cash flow in’ or ‘cash flow flow out exceeds cash flow in plus assets on hand’ then the US government, GWB proprietor, is ‘bankrupt’.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: Is it troubling at all that this paragraph, the third in a piece tomorrow’s Post, appears to be the White House’s own description of how they’ll sell their Social Security phase-out plan?

The campaign will use Bush’s campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support — contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away.

Hmmm.

Even if you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, can you sucker a majority?

For 45 years, the defense-industry analyst paid into the system until his retirement in 1994. But with all the recent hoopla over reform, Mr. Logue, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, decided to go back and check his own records. Would he have done better investing his money than the bureaucrats at the Social Security Administration?

He recorded all the payroll taxes he paid into the system (including the matching amount from his employer), tracked down the return the Social Security Trust Fund earned for each of the 45 years, and then compared the result with what he would have gotten had he been able to invest the same amount of payroll tax money over the same period in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (including dividends).

To his surprise, the Social Security investment won out: $261,372 versus $255,499, a difference of $5,873.

Yes, it’s partly a timing phenomenon (but people who depend on retirement income are less able to time than others), and yes, “Advocates of privatization point out - correctly - that Logue’s analysis compares theoretical stock returns with what the Social Security Trust Fund earned - not what he himself would get from the system.” But not everyone has optimum earnings. And the transactions costs and fees of private plans are going to be much, much larger than what the efficient Social Security Administration (arguably the most efficient agency in the federal government) currently spends. Which is why Wall St. is salivating.

Indeed, as the Monitor points out, “The debate hinges considerably on what people want their retirement system to be. Social Security has always been an insurance program. It was never intended as an investment scheme.” And relying solely on private pensions means you inevitably get a cadre of very poor old people:

… under Britain’s privatized pension system, so many retirees are doing so poorly at this moment that a commission warned this fall that widespread poverty among the elderly may be returning, which could require massive new government spending.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get this sort of reasonable thinking into the mainstream.