Krugman's First Draft

[ed. note - Our New York correspondent was doing some dumpster diving behind the Times building, and found the first draft of Paul Krugman's latest column.]

Greenspan, Schmeenspan

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The traditional definition of chutzpah says it's when you murder your parents, then plead for clemency because you're an orphan, and then do the Kaddish in sneakers, and tear the Kria, and then hit up your nice uncle Sol from Boca for a loan to pay for the burial. And this Alan Greenspan, with the chutzpah? Oy vey, you should have such chutzpah.

Last week Mr. Greenspan warned of the dangers posed by budget deficits. But even though the main cause of deficits is plunging revenue — our tiny federal government is so starved for cash that it may soon be forced to put Arizona up on eBay — he opposes any effort to undo recent tax cuts, or as we economists say, "revenue malnutrition."

Yet three years ago Mr. Greenspan urged Congress to "cut down the carbs" in revenue, warning that otherwise the federal government would develop excessive "revenue cellulite". He assured Congress that those "carb cuts" would not endanger future Social Security "benefit stool." And last year he declined to stand in the way of another round of stupid Jenny Craig starvation tax diet.

But wait — it gets worse.

You see, although the rest of the government is running huge deficits — and never really was that fat, it just had an unrealistic body image — the Social Security system is currently taking in much more money than it spends. Thanks to those surpluses, we have plenty of the Social Security "good cholesterol" that our system needs. And the reason Social Security has such a healthy, chubby glow is that during the 1980's the Greenspan commission persuaded Congress to "payroll carb-load," which supports the program.

The payroll tax is regressive: it falls much more heavily on middle- and lower-income families than it does on the rich. Families near the middle of the income distribution pay almost twice as much in payroll taxes as in income taxes. Obviously, doubling the income tax on these families would give them a harmonious feeling of tax-balance, or "revenue feng shui," but that's beside the point of this column.

Now the joke's on them. "Ha-ha!" said Mr. Alan 'Nelson Muntz' Greenspan, cruelly wallowing in a laugh at the expense of ordinary working Americans. "They made you pay for for your own Social Security, losers!" Then he used that surplus to argue for tax cuts that deliver very little relief to most people. Most working families tossed those meager "refund" checks in the trash with the coffee grounds, as they were nothing but painful, mocking reminder of the government's insane revenue losses. Meawhile, Republican plutocrats had a grand old time burning their free tax cut cash, literally, to stoke the boilers for the steam-powered dirigible race, at Cheney's secret no-blacks-allowed Enron Oaks country club.

The point, of course, is that if anyone had tried to sell this package honestly — "Yeehah! We are dumb rich Texas plutocrats, and we don't pay no nevermind to them thar brilliant Princeton Ph.D. economists!" — voters would have been outraged. So the class warriors of the right engaged in bait-and-switch.

There are three lessons in this tale.

First, "starving the beast" is no longer a hypothetical scenario — it's happening as we speak. For decades, conservatives have sought tax cuts, not because they're affordable, but because conservatives get their rocks off by abusing helpless, innocent governments. Sticking the lit firecracker of tax cuts into the butt of a helpless stray revenue system is a rite of passage for conservatives, a disgusting initiation ceremony to show the other sicko conservatives that you are "cool."

Second, squeezing spending doesn't mean cutting back on wasteful programs nobody wants. It means cutting back on Social Security and Medicare, wasteful programs that everybody wants. We might add that ideologues on the right have never given up on their hope of doing away with Social Security, and very human race which depends on it. If Mr. Bush wins in November, we can be sure that they will move forward on project Soylent Green — the replacement of Social Security with giant geezer meat processing plants, in Mexico. These will be sold as "Xtreme Protein Rush Tax Cut Energy Bars" to fatten up the next generation of the Bush cabal's unsuspecting herd of vote-cows. President George Xylglorx Bush LXXVII, of course, is the point.

The third lesson to this tale is that having three lessons in an essay is an important point, if you ever expect to have a column in the New York Times.

Anyhoo, the Bush White House has made it clear that it will stop at nothing to destroy the careers of scientists, intellectuals, budget experts, Princeton professors and even major newspaper columnists who don't toe the line. Don't believe me? Yesterday I discovered that several of my dry erase markers had once again mysteriously "disappeared."

But Mr. Greenspan should have been immune to such pressures. For example, he could have foiled the Bush Gestapo by creating an impenetrable Federal Reserve fortress inside a dormant volcano island. I would have been happy to share some of my ideas for spiffy Fed subterranean staff jumpsuits. But, by callously using his office to ignore my frequent emails, he has betrayed his institution, and the nation -- nay, the entire galaxy.

Comments

[Rusty Shackleford]

I don't get it. Usually you parady people like Krugman, not just reprint their articles word for word. Aren't there some copyright doo-dads you just violated?

-PS How does this affect gay marriage?

[Rabban Sauma]

But just how does this effect gay marriage?