Older Americans do not intend to ruin America, but as a group, that's what they're about. On average, the federal government supports each American 65 and over by about $26,000 a year (about $14,000 through Social Security, $12,000 through Medicare). At 65, the average American will live almost 20 more years. Should these sizable annual subsidies begin later and be less for some? It's hard to discuss the budget realistically if you ignore most of what the budget does.

The Social Security money they're stealing is theirs, of course--taken out of their paychecks over their entire working lives. What Samuelson is proposing--if he really wants to discuss the budget realistically--is that they should get less of their money back in order to maintain tax cuts for the rich.

Medicare is different, in large part because  healthcare costs really have increased dramatically. That's someone's fault--apparently old people's.

Samuelson goes on to writes about the "contradiction" between people's desire to do something about deficits and their belief that Social Security and Medicare shouldn't be cut. Which isn't a contradiction at all; people support reducing spending in other areas, like the military, and raising revenues via tax hikes on the wealthy. But here's his case:

What sustains these contradictions is a mythology holding that, once people hit 65, most become poor. This justifies political dogma among Democrats that resists Social Security or Medicare cuts of even one dollar.

But the premise is wrong. True, some elderly live hand-to-mouth; many more are comfortable, and some are wealthy. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports the following for Medicare beneficiaries in 2010: 25 percent had savings and retirement accounts averaging $207,000 or more; among homeowners (four-fifths of those 65 and older), three-quarters had equity in their houses averaging $132,000; about 25 percent had incomes exceeding $47,000 (that’s for individuals, and couples would be higher).

So to say "most" old people are poor is wrong--and to prove that, he shows that some older people aren't poor at all.

Go to the Kaiser report he's citing, and you get a very different impression.

From the key findings:

-Half of all Medicare beneficiaries had incomes below $22,000 in 2010; less than 1 percent had incomes over $250,000.

--Half of all Medicare beneficiaries have less than $2,100 in retirement account savings (such as IRAs), and half of all Medicare beneficiaries have less than $31,000 in other financial assets (such as savings accounts)

But why focus on the average Medicare recipient when you can isolate the wealthiest and decry all seniors for their plan to "ruin America"? What Samuelson is saying that "we need to recognize that federal retiree programs often represent middle-class welfare." What he actually seems to be saying is that there is inequality--rich people are getting richer. There are ways to redistribute that wealth in order to pay for everyone's healthcare. But something tells me that's not what he's advocating.

With every election, we descend into soundbite economics. Rhetorical claims grow more partisan and self-serving.... These debates confirm the dreary state of economic discourse.

He points his finger at both the right and the left, but then goes on to basically endorse the right-wing critique of Obama's policies--as in, "Confidence is crucial to stimulating consumer spending and business investment, and Obama constantly subverts confidence." As an example, Samuelson writes that "the moratorium on deepwater drilling kills jobs."

It's refreshing to see that he's not stooping to partisan soundbites! A recent White House report showed that job loss due to the moratorium is much lower than was expected, and that many of those job losses will be temporary. As Grist noted (9/17/10), the Wall Street Journal reported that Louisiana parishes tied to the drilling industry saw some job increases.

Samuelson goes on to refer to Obama's plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy another sign of  "his delusional approach." Again--good to see that he's avoiding partisan soundbites. The problem, as Samuelson sees it, is that the tax cuts will hurt small businesses--the tax increases will "affect 725,000 returns with about $400 billion of business income." As Dean Baker pointed out, the tax hikes for the vast majority of those considered small business will be small:

The Joint Tax Committee of Congress projected that the average tax hit on tax filers with incomes between $200,000 and $500,000 (the vast majority of the affected small businesses) would see an increase in their taxes of just $500. This is unlikely to have much impact on their hiring and growth. It is also worth noting that the higher Clinton era tax rates were in place in the late '90s, when the economy was generating more than 8,000 jobs a day.

Samuelson wraps up the piece by noting that our "campaign discourse is strangely disconnected from underlying economic realities." Is he talking about his column?

In his August 24 broadside against what he dubs Barack Obama's "Rail Boondoggle," Samuelson trots out the tired argument against "almost $35 billion in subsidies into Amtrak" that "the federal government has poured" in the last four decades--with the usual corporate pundit omissions, like the fact that, as long ago as 1994 it was determined that "hidden subsidies for drivers amount to well over $2 for every gallon of gasoline sold."

Beyond that, "Samuelson tries to tell us that trains might be useful in Japan and Europe, but they won't work in the United States":

He tells readers that:

Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it's 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile.

The density for the United States as a whole would be relevant if the plans were to build a train network going from Florida to Alaska, but that is not what is on the agenda. Instead, the issue is about deepening and improving the network in relatively densely populated parts of the country, like Ohio (277 people per square mile), New York (402) and New Jersey (1,134). The population densities of much of the United States are very comparable to the regions in Europe through which high-speed rails travel.

Baker then tells how "Samuelson also bizarrely compares long-distance train with the 140 million daily trips to work each day," even though "most people do not travel between cities every day, so it's not clear what the point of the comparison is."

Recapping, Baker writes that "Robert Samuelson doesn't like trains. He told us that this morning in his column." However, "he didn't tell us anything else."

See the FAIR magazine Extra!: "The Railroading of Amtrak: Trains, Planes and Automobiles Held to Different Standards" (7–8/02) by Christopher Ott.

I am not an economist. I'm a journalist. And so that anything I say that seems contradictory to what a freshman in college would learn in your basic Principles of Economics course, I should be absolved of any sin for that, because as I say I am not a card-carrying member of the fraternity.

No one is asking Samuelson to be an economist. But it sounds like what he's saying is that not being one frees him to write about things like trade, inequality or Social Security without the burden of knowing much about the issues.

Samuelson is one of the few mainstream pundits who still doubts the science on climate change. The problem there isn't that he's not a climate scientist, but that he doesn't believe they know what they're talking about.