in an effort to be more specific...

thanks in large part to cps in comments, i spent a chunk of yesterday thinking about why i was so upset at alan greenspan's comments regarding social security. in deference to those who think the nyt coverage was unfair, i'm just going to pick on this, as i did in comments yesterday: greenspan aptly located the source of our incredible budget deficit -- in massively increased military spending. so how to trim this deficit? interestingly, the answer was not to curtail military spending, but rather to cut entitlement programs.

[i should point out that i'm actually a supporter of a reconsideration of some entitlements. means-testing in social security, for example, does not seem like a terrible idea to me. obviously, this is a program that needs some revamping if my parents and their baby-booming ilk aren't going to bankrupt it entirely.]

greenspan's answer is an exceedingly common answer in the bush administration, and a fully conscious one. conservatives have attacked social spending from a hundred angles in the past several years, but the two modes of attack that have emerged most victorious of late are (1) "lucky duckies" (not my term) and (2) "musical deficits" (the best term i could come up with). both are designed to screw poor and working people, in order to confuse poor and working people, in order that poor and working people might be convinced henceforth to screw themselves.

the "lucky duckies" are those high rollers earning $12,000 per year or less, and they were so named by the wall street journal in a 2002 editorial. they are lucky because they pay only 4% per year in taxes. (they are "duckies," apparently, because that's the most demeaning thing the wsj people could invent.) according to the wsj, the problem here is that paying so little in taxes, while obtaining so much government largesse, prevents these folks from feeling enough rage against the government to hold it in check. the editorial, released in late 2002, led the bright minds in the bush administration on a long quest for a convincing argument that the rich are overtaxed and the poor undertaxed.

what i've called musical deficits is the conservative practice of running up huge deficits, then somehow removing the sources of those deficits (military spending or tax cuts) from the game. the deficits land on social welfare programs instead, and such programs end up getting cut. do the social welfare programs actually account for the deficits? no. however: can conservatives convince americans that they do? maybe. greenspan appears to have moved from military deficits to social welfare cuts without blinking, and startling numbers of the working poor have been convinced to vote for candidates who promise only to give money back to their bosses.

in both of these frames the ultimate goal is disembowelment of any government program designed to help people other than the already rich, and the recruitment of the intended beneficiaries of those programs as footsoldiers in the war against their own quality of life.