Thomas Friedman Shows Some Low Imagination, or At Least Low Comprehension

Thomas Friedman gives the Republicans some well-deserved bashing in his column today, but he also unthinkingly repeats his standard lines:

"The second of our great long-term challenges are our huge debt and entitlement obligations."

Of course our debt has expanded substantially due to the economic devastation caused by the collapse of the housing bubble. It is not at a level that poses any great harm to the country as witnessed both by the fact that financial markets are willing to lend the United States money at very low interest rates and also that the United States and other countries have been able to sustain much larger debt burdens for long periods of time.

The part about entitlement obligations is misleading since the real problem is the broken U.S. health care system. We pay more than twice as much per person for our health care as people in other wealthy countries. This gap is projected to rise rapidly in the decades ahead. If we paid a comparable amount for our health care we would be looking at long-term budget surpluses, not deficits.

It is ironic that Friedman unthinkingly repeats cliches about entitlements when the point of the article is adopting policies to ensure that the United States is among the HIEs (high-imagination-enabling country) rather the LIEs (low-imagination-enabling countries).

HIE FIVES ARE NOT LIES - LET THE CONFIDENCE FAIRY BE FREE!, Low-rated comment [Show]

one can dream
written by Peter K., February 12, 2012 11:27 AM

How about we put David Brooks, Ross Douthat, and Friedman in a rocket ship and shoot them into orbit?

How is that for an imaginative solution?

...
written by Chris, February 12, 2012 1:18 PM

Indeed, Peter K. What amazes one is that the NYT continues to employ pundits who write pieces, almost every one of which is refuted for its obvious ignorance or stupidity by smarter people soon after it is published. If the writers cannot be shamed, you would think their employer would be.

Indeed, Chris,
written by diesel, February 12, 2012 5:16 PM

the difficulty faced by the NYTimes lies in finding a spokesman for the so-called Right who can, at the same time, construct an argument utilizing accepted forms of grammar and logic while respecting empirical and historic fact. Since this is clearly impossible (by definition), they must accept the nearest similitude, i.e. "thinkers" whose writings are composed of sentences which hold together solely by the inner logic of their subjective, emotional needs.

...
written by Roger B., February 12, 2012 7:33 PM

The Brooks-Douthat-Friedman trio is indeed depressing, as is the Times's recent trend toward lightness, especially since the News of the Week in Review became the Sunday Review, replete with huge art, a tediously redundant eight-panel cartoon, and one piece of editorial fluff after another. But hey, it could be worse. At least they off-loaded William Kristol.

http://benL8.blogspot.com
written by Ben Leet, February 13, 2012 12:43 PM

Jeff Faux at EPI wrote an short article about the inevitable devaluation of the dollar, http://www.epi.org/blog/cheaper-dollar-not-enough/
"But what is really implausible is the notion that America’s creditors will continue to finance our current account deficit forever. The mills of macroeconomic adjustment may grind slowly, but sooner or later—with or without a change in U.S. dollar policy—they will grind away the dollar’s inflated position in the world. " Good debt is spending on value not on junk. We have a long way to go to shift our habits, read military waste. But shooting people into space when we disagree with them has a lot of appeal.

Thomas Friedman Shows Some Low Imagination, or At Least Low Comprehension

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