Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Age Rating Game

Maggie Mahar Health Care Blog discusses some of the rhetoric employed in media on how to pay for health insurance. In other words, when costs are distributed over a large group, older adults save more than younger adults lose. Still, many believe that older Boomers can and should pick up the higher tab for their […]

Intergenerational Real Benefits in Social Security (Rosser Equation Illustrated)

by Bruce Webb In 2003 CBO published an Issue Brief illustrating the relative contribution of Aging and Real Benefit Growth to future Social Security spending called The Future Growth of Social Security: It’s Not Just Society’s Aging with results graphed above:. Discussion under the fold. Approximately 55 percent of the higher spending is due to […]

Maybe Bristol Palin is Right

No, not that anyone should pay her $15,000-$30,000 to talk to teenagers about why they should be abstinent. (Short version: “As with my mother, I wasn’t, and look what I’m doing now. Uh, well…”) But, via Andrew Samwick, a study from the Pew Foundation (PDF) using PSID data finds that: Among children who start in […]

PSA

It’s true that I have been a bit nastier than usual with some posts (especially this one and this one—though the latter was rather justified by preceding events, as Tom detailed.) The sight of economists who should know better saying “Ewww, tariffs” in the manner of second grade boys who think girls have “cooties” is […]

Intergenerational Equity, Unfunded Liability and Selfish Boomers

The newest buzzphrase in the Social Security world is ‘Intergenerational Equity’. It is indeed the theme of the new movie IOUSA (to whose webpage I link) which itself is pretty much a documentary of the Concord Coaltion’s Fiscal Wake Up Tour. (The fact that Concord was founded by Pete Peterson and rights to distribute the […]