Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  If there was any one subject about which Donald Trump has been pellucidly clear, it has been this:  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are to remain sacrosanct. Indeed, I would argue this has been central to his takeover of the Republican Party -- he adopted not just elements of the New Deal but elements of the Great Society too, jettisoning the political baggage of having to oppose them.  When he did debate other Republicans in the spring of 2016 he was consistently 'to their left' on such matters.  And (a distinct but related point) when he was President the first time, he consistently told us that in another two weeks or so we would see a great new plan for health care coverage that would make Obamacare obsolete. Talk like a populist though you walk like a plutocrat.  The Republicans in the House of Representatives, it appears, did not get any of those memos.    One and only one Republican voted against the budget resolution, which uses Medic...

 Anti-abortion forces have often focused on what one may simply call the anti-killing argument. Killing a human being without justification, mitigation, or excuse is murder. A fetus, or even an embryo, is in relevant respects a human being. Thus [insert obvious conclusion here.] Bracket that argument for a second. My point in bringing it up now is simply to contrast it with a very different argument one has also often encountered in recent decades. I think of it as the natalist argument.  It is not pro-life or even anti-killing.  It is pro birth. The higher the birthrate the better.  In recent years this has often gone hand-in-hand with arguments over social security.  "To make social security work, we have to have new young people entering the workforce in a regular basis -- the more of them do so, the more fiscally sound the system is for another generation. The prevalence of abortion (or ready availability of birth control for that matter) limits the number o...

  One idea now making the rounds among some policy wonks is this: we can improve the social security system by changing the way adjustments to payments are made.  SS recipients now typically get a cost of living allowance (COLA) to keep their payments at a constant level of spending power. Something like that is a very appealing idea in a system where inflation is more a feature of the system than a bug in it.   But ... I'm sure I heard one of the contenders in the latest Republican Presidential debate saying. "We ought to link Social Security payments NOT to COLA, but to inflation.  That would save some money and help preserve the system."   In fact I think this was one of the relatively sane Republicans: Christie? Haley?  The proposition is NOT self-defeating in any obvious way.  COLA is not the only possible index of inflation, after all.  One could measure inflation literally, by the expansion of the money supply.  (Although the...