Our long-term deficit is not a function of our current spending, which is manageable. It is a function of our expected spending growth, particularly in health care. With the system growing at 8 percent a year and GDP growing at 2 percent or 3 percent a year, there's a real long-term problem there. But you can't cut, or even tax, your way out of it....That's why I like to say that after we pass health-care reform, we're going to need to pass health-care reform. Unless you can bring the sector's growth under control, there's no way to get the deficit under control.

But if you can bring our costs more in line with international norms, the deficit problem disappears entirely. That's what you're seeing in the graph atop this post: The orange line shooting upward is our projected deficit. The other lines gliding downward are our projected deficit if we had the per-person health-care costs of other countries. But we're not going to get there, or near there, by cutting. We can do it only by reforming. (emphasis supplied)

I think that's what Klein is getting at, though. Cutting benefits and raising taxes aren't enough to make the system sustainable in the long run, so we need to reform the underlying system in order to address the cost-drivers themselves.

From that article, its almost as if the author thinks this expensive 'reform" is needed to force us to actually address the real issue.

CEPR already skewed their data set by using old GDP projection information. I don't know how they site their own critique of IOUSA as information (I didn't know self-citing was an acceptable tactic for presenting information).

I imagine you regard Rush Limbaugh slightly more positively than I regard Ezra Klein. Beyond being economically wrong on nearly every point, Klein is a pro-government, pro-Keynes commentator that has the general understanding of a grapefruit.

I'd like to see where he got his projection information and the component costs of his reduction figures. From what I know about the deficit and already promised expenditures there is no way that this can be true.

I'm pretty sure the mistake you're making is to assume SS and Medicare will pay out 100%. SS is already, 25 years in advance, stating that they're not going to pay up. It's on the front page of their web site, saying they will only pay 77 cents on the dollar. So that's not going to run a deficit. The main problem is Medicare. BBut if you look it up, the UK for example spends a third as much on health care per capita. That' definitely comparing apples to oranges but if we were to somehow cut Medicare spending by 66% it wold definitely be solvent with the current tax rate.

You're ok with a governmental system calculating its existence in robbing an average of 23% per person?

Am I "ok" with it? Not exactly, but calling this "robbery" is a huge stretch. When SS was implemented the average age of a pensioner was eight years. Today, it is over twenty years. The system was never designed to pay benefits for that long, so it's no surprise that it can't pay out in full. I never would have supported using SS surpluses to fund the general budget but there's nothing that can be done about that now.

Sure there exists things we can do about it now and statin the existence of a wealthdestruction engine as being ok because it was more benign 60 years ago is hardly something I would call an argument in defense of.

No there isn't. Simply killing SS entirely now, or alternatively forcing current workers to pay SS tax but not giving them any benefits so we can pay 100% to current or near-future pensioners, would result in far more "robbery" than paying 77% 25 years from now. Or perhaps you're suggesting we get rid of the tax now but still pay the full obligation to everyone whom has ever paid in? Where do you suppose we would get the money for that, you want to just print money for all of them and run a 40% of GDP deficit?

A wealth destruction engine? Seriously? It's forced savings for retirement. Anyone who's not an idiot does that. If SS hadn't been repeatedly raided, the only thing you'd "lose" from SS is the difference in the investment interest between the government investment and a similar private one. So, one or two percent on average?

Depends on the investment vehicle but the freedom to best secure one's future happiness has been taken away. For some it may be 1-2% for others it may be closer to 30% compounded annually.

Wealth destruction.

effectively generating wealth for transferring wealth to that person.

That said, there's an interesting confirmation bias present in the people you chose to mention; said confirmation bias is substantiated by the sources you generally choose to post. So, let me ask you something ...

How many "conservative" responses to Yglesias do you read for every blog post of his you read? How many non-Keynesian economic analyses do you read for every Keynesian one Krugman issues?