Even before the latest flooding, a group representing engineers said the United States needed to spend about $1 trillion more than it does now to bring infrastructure up to par with modern needs and standards. Wow. A trillion dollars is a lot of money. But as it happens we have in fact an identified revenue […]

For those of you not in the mood for numeric wonkery Biggs also points us to Furman’s response to Larry Lindsey’s Obama Turns FDR Upside Down. In an letter included in Obama’s Proposals for Social Security Considered Furman gives us this: There is much to disagree with in Larry Lindsey’s June 20 op-ed, “Obama Turns […]

More homework for Coberly and Arne (and any others who want to join in). Andrew Biggs alerts us to the release of the Treasury Department’s Issue Brief No. 5: Social Security Reform: Strategies for Progressive Benefit Adjustments The proposal seems quite interesting. Rather than simply readjusting the benefit schedule by some blunt change in method […]

Andrew Biggs was Deputy Commissioner of Social Security until February, previously he was a top analyst at Cato’s Project for Social Security Privatization, currently he is doing something quite similar at AEI. He has a blog called Notes on Social Security Reform which deserves more traffic, not just because Andrew is a nice guy and […]

Although a lot of people are aware that ‘Low Cost is Out There’ it is difficult to impossible to find anyone who takes it seriously. Some experts simply dismiss it out of hand (Samwick), others point to the Stochastic Projections and simply deem it unlikely (Biggs), then again others reject it on grounds that run […]

Just a brief shot before going out the door. In both the Obama and McCain camps there are separate but related discussion of ‘privatization’ and charges that in particular McCain is lying, or that the people who claim that Bush never supported ‘privatization’ are lunatics. But I fear that a rhetorical trap is being laid […]

Well I want to get back to some of the basics. Much of the confusion around Social Security, and this is true as much for supporters as opponents, is a failure to understand what the Trust Fund actually is. This failure has led to such myths as ‘The Great Raids of Johnson/Reagan/etc’, the idea that […]

I have said a number of times in posts and comments here that the numbers on Social Security are all extremely important, because paradoxically little of the debate about ‘crisis’ is number driven at all. Instead I want to argue that it is fundamentally an attempt to tell a story to sell a particular set […]

Andrew Biggs notes that the Technical Panel of the SSAB (Social Security Advisory Board) has released its Report on Assumptions and Methods. I am only a few pages into the 82 page Report but my initial response is that this is a very important deal. These people do seem to be actual independent observers fully […]

by Bruce Webb Andrew Biggs at his site Notes on Social Security Reform spotted and copied a remarkable article from the WSJ under the title Obama’s Social Security Plan Draws Critics, Even Dems. Why remarkable? Because the people quoted actually seem to know what they are talking about, rather unusual for a MSM publication. Rather […]