Governor Rick Perry of Texas is being attacked by two rivals in the GOP presidential race. His sin, if you can believe it, is that he told the truth (as acknowledged by everyone from Paul Krugman to Milton Friedman) about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme. Here’s an excerpt from Philip Klein’s column in the […]
read more...I cover a wide range of issues in this interview for Bloomberg Asia. My main theme, not surprisingly, is that government is too big. And I specifically warn about the looming explosion of entitlement spending as the baby boom generation retires.
read more...Under current law, Social Security is supposed to be an “earned benefit,” where taxes are akin to insurance premiums that finance retirement benefits for workers. And because there is a cap on retirement benefits, this means there also is a “wage-base cap” on the amount of income that is hit by the payroll tax. For […]
read more...One of my presentations at CPAC addressed America’s long-term entitlement crisis. I was part of a panel organized by the National Taxpayers Union, and I discussed how to solve the long-run fiscal problems caused by Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The lighting and focus leave something to be desired, but hopefully my message is crisp […]
read more...There are two crises facing Social Security. First the program has a gigantic unfunded liability, largely caused by demographics. Second, the program is a very bad deal for younger workers, making them pay record amounts of tax in exchange for comparatively meager benefits. This video explains how personal accounts can solve both problems, and also […]
read more...I’m just making up the 1.94 percent number, but the International Herald Tribune reported last year that unfunded liabilities in France are nearly 550 percent of GDP. The news reports don’t include any estimates of what Sarkozy’s reform will mean, but I would be surprised if it had a big impact on France’s long-run fiscal […]
read more...The Economist has a fascinating webpage that allows you to look at all the world’s nations and compare them based on various measures of government debt (and for various years). The most economically relevant measure is public debt as a share of GDP, and you can see that the United States is not in great […]
read more...In the latest “Economics 101” video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P), Kelly McDonough, a student at American University, explains that unfunded liabilities are America’s biggest red-ink problem, dwarfing the official national debt.
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