Washington Post on I.O.U.S.A. the Movie
August 7th, 2008 . by economistmom
I.O.U.S.A. is the front page Business section story in the Washington Post today! Alas, no naming of The Concord Coalition or our star Bob Bixby; Bob is basically dubbed a stunt man–and Dave Walker gets “action hero” billing. As writer Frank Ahrens puts it:
…Early reviewers have dubbed the film “An Inconvenient Truth” for the economy, meaning it’s not exactly the feel-good movie of late summer 2008.
Except for budget wonks in love, it hardly counts as a date movie. The film’s thrilling action sequence has a guy going to a refrigerator for a Tab. There are no car chases and nothing blows up.
Except, possibly, for the entire economic future of the United States.
“I.O.U.S.A.” offers up as its action hero David M. Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office. With movie-star looks that scream “accountant” rather than “Terminator,” Walker has been the Cassandra — or Chicken Little — of America’s growing deficit for some time…
Check out the reference to Arthur Laffer later in the article, who is held up as if he’s the only kind of naysayer when it comes to the “heading off a credit cliff” message. That won’t make entitlement-status-quo types happy… (Laffer is not interviewed in the movie although there are old clips of him from the “Reaganomics” days.)
And here’s the reminder of where and when at the end of the Post article:
The film will debut in 400 theaters around the country on [Thursday] Aug. 21, followed by a live video town hall meeting from Omaha, featuring Walker, Peterson and Buffett. The next day [Fri., Aug. 22], the film opens in 10 cities, including Washington.
You can go to the Fathom Events (the promoter’s) website to find out if the special premiere/town hall event will be coming to a theatre near you.
Dean Baker over at Beat The Press seems to have given a thumbs down on this movie. Maybe you and he can do a Siskel and Ebert type discussion.
pgl: Thanks for pointing me to that. That is not a negative review of the movie, though– it’s a negative view of the Concord Coalition and the Peterson Foundation, and there’s little I could say to change the mind of those who feel as Dean Baker does. I agree (and Concord agrees) with Dean that the major challenge is rising health care costs. But acknowledging that doesn’t mean we don’t have to reexamine the rest of the federal budget or the how public policy affects the entirety of the US economy more generally. If we adopt a “health care is the problem, so health care must be the solution” attitude, we’d be taking tax cuts off the table, too–not just Social Security. And if I felt more confident that we’ll be able to effectively, sufficiently rein in overall health spending (public and private) without too drastically reducing the provision of health care, then sure, I could say, “yeah–why pick on the rest of the government budget?”
…and just to repeat myself (from prior posts, I’m sure), we want to preserve and strengthen Social Security, not end it, just like we want to preserve and strengthen federal entitlement programs in general. (We don’t mean privatize, either.)
I don’t see how anything in the movie suggests anything different, but I don’t know if Dean’s review is based on actually seeing the movie.