by Dan Mitchell | Mar 2, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
When I write about Social Security, my main goal is to point out how Americans would be much richer if the United States had personal retirement accounts based on real savings (like workers in Australia, Chile, Switzerland, Hong...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 23, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Part I of this series looked at unfunded pension debt of states and Part II examined the unfunded pension debt of cities. In Part III, let’s look at the degree to which state taxpayers are exposed to big unfunded liabilities for “Other Post-Employment Benefits” such...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 25, 2020 | Blogs
I’m a long-time critic of the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, but I had no idea they would produce something as bad as the 2008 financial meltdown. It’s not easy to predict the timing and severity of a crisis. Unless we’re talking about the ticking time...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 24, 2020 | Blogs
When I put forth the “The Case for Social Security Personal Accounts” in early 2011, I pointed out that the program’s long-run fiscal shortfall was more than $27 trillion. We should be so lucky to have that problem today. The Social Security Administration just...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 16, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, States
Politicians have a giant incentive to provide lavish benefits to interest groups that then recycle some of the loot back to elected officials in the form of campaign contributions. But the real key to the scam is that the bill gets imposed on future generations. The...