Via Joshua Marshall provides a link to the GOP’s weekend retreat reading material. There is a lot of misleading nonsense in this document, so it may attract a lot of rebuttal comments from various blogging economists, but there is a set of claims in the very opening summary , which I’d like to focus on. […]
James N. Morgan is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Michigan and served on advisory committees to the Social Security Administration from 1966-69. The Ann Arbor News interviewed Dr. Morgan this weekend. Highlights include: Q. What do you think is the most important thing for people to know during the upcoming debate over […]
David John and William Beach take the low road in their attempt to justify the claim that Social Security hurts blacks by asking us to believe that Beach and Gareth Davis fully answered their critics back in 1998. Rather getting into the name-calling over this issue, let me suggest that an unbiased estimate of the […]
Nominations for two categories are up now: best series and best post (parts 1, 2, and 3). The latter category even includes two posts by yours truly. AB UPDATE: Best Series link fixed.
As it turns out, there is no problem with Social Security, not even a small one. Quiddity explains. AB
Louis Woodhall writes in The Real Social Security Crisis is Economic Growth: The Trustees of the Social Security Administration assume (in their “Intermediate” case”) that over the next 75 years, the U.S. economy will grow at an average “real” rate of 1.9%…America can’t live on a “starvation diet” of 1.9% real economic growth. Over the […]
Brian Riedl writes over at the National Review: America’s debt burden is actually below the post-World War II average. In fact, it’s lower than at any time during the high-flying 1990s…A better measure is the federal government’s debt ratio, calculated as the total federal publicly held debt as a percentage of America’s annual income (the […]
From a 2/5/2004 post: Here’s a proposal I’d like to see analyzed: means-tested matches, on a sliding scale, to Roth and Traditional IRA contributions, with EITC recipients getting some amount match-free. Amidst all of the talk over privatization, I’ve yet to hear much along these lines. But this is a form of “ownership society” I […]
We have been wrong all along. The ever wise Fafnir explains it all in SOCIAL SECURITY CRISIS!: The FAQ!.
Seems the DONALD has been fielding the tough questions on Social Security reform with some interesting answers: Q1: How will the transition costs be paid for? A1: We can be sure the poor won’t pay any transition costs, because poor people have no resources with which to pay them. Q2: How will he guarantee the […]