Peter Orzag

~ susie

Here’s a guy who admits that Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, but suggests we cut it anyway to get credibility.

Orzag was tasked by the White House to sell Social Security cuts to the public, and now that he’s left, I have no reason to believe he’s not still getting paid to push this idea.

Published by susie

3 thoughts on “Peter Orzag”

  1. I love how his column at the NY Times doesn’t have a comments section. Today’s column made me really infuriated. He’s the kind of technocrat who now has this future set and he doesn’t have to worry about retiring, ever. I’d love to change that future and let him deal with economic insecurity, especially, if I read it correctly, reducing benefits as a person gets older… because,we all know that landlords lower the rent as the tenant gets older and the food store gives every senior a discount!

  2. The NYTimes did have one worthwhile opinion piece, about how our brains develop and understand metaphors.

    This one really hit home, as so much of what I’m reading about politics and hearing from our pols and their sycophants is making me actually feel sick to my stomach.

    …. So where did this facility with symbolism come from? It strikes me that the human brain has evolved a necessary shortcut for doing so, and with some major implications.

    A single part of the brain processes both physical and psychic pain.
    Consider an animal (including a human) that has started eating some rotten, fetid, disgusting food. As a result, neurons in an area of the brain called the insula will activate. Gustatory disgust. Smell the same awful food, and the insula activates as well. Think about what might count as a disgusting food (say, taking a bite out of a struggling cockroach). Same thing.

    Now read in the newspaper about a saintly old widow who had her home foreclosed by a sleazy mortgage company, her medical insurance canceled on flimsy grounds, and got a lousy, exploitative offer at the pawn shop where she tried to hock her kidney dialysis machine. You sit there thinking, those bastards, those people are scum, they’re worse than maggots, they make me want to puke … and your insula activates. Think about something shameful and rotten that you once did … same thing. Not only does the insula “do” sensory disgust; it does moral disgust as well. Because the two are so viscerally similar. When we evolved the capacity to be disgusted by moral failures, we didn’t evolve a new brain region to handle it. Instead, the insula expanded its portfolio. (My emphasis)

    My insula has been working overtime these past 10 years. Obama’s…what to call it? Duplicity? Conservatism? Orszag. The ConservaDems. Erskine Bowles (brought to us courtesy of Obama).

    Repubs? Almost don’t affect me. But these running dog corporatist lackeys in the Democratic Party sure do.

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