As a new anti-"big government" documentary named IOUSA gets largely uncritical treatment from various newspapers around the U.S., the Center for Economic and Policy Research provides a typically valuable service in the form of a new report in which Dean Baker and David Rosnick give "a minute-by-minute viewers guide of the film to highlight potentially misleading assertions." In the CEPR's announcement (10/22/08), Baker says that,

while there are serious economic issues the nation needs to be concerned about, the views presented in IOUSA are misleading and one-sided.... The fact that ballooning healthcare costs are at the heart of our budget problem, not a Social Security program that will remain fully solvent through 2049 as implied in the movie, are just two examples of the misstatements found in the film....

The American public has a right to know the whole story behind our current economic conditions so that we're not railroaded into making bad policy choices.... Unfortunately, IOUSA gives less than a full accounting of the issues at play.

Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: Dean Baker on Social Security (10/5/07)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.