Multiple Choice: Economics

The New York Times has an interesting multiple choice question regarding how to spend money to help stimulate the economy, If you wanted to help the economy and you had $14 billion to bestow on any group of people, which group would you choose: a) Teenagers and young adults, who have an 18 percent unemployment rate. b) All the middle-age long-term jobless who, ...

Health Care Fallacy #1

Tyler Cowen has three health care fallacies and the first one is something I've mentioned before (and tooke quite a bit of heat for), Today's report is this: The financial outlook for Medicare and Social Security has significantly worsened, as the bad economy and mounting job losses have pushed both programs years closer to insolvency, according to a grim report issued Tuesday ...

McCain and ‘Privatizing’ Social Security

Quite a few commenters are accusing John McCain of flip-flopping because he favored privatization of Social security in 2004 and now adamantly rejects the insinuation that he supports it now: This is a clumsy rhetorical game rather than a policy shift. Then and now, McCain's position is that Social Security would remain as a government program but that younger workers ...

Social Security Privatization and Bad Times

Publius snarks, "It's too bad we didn't invest one-third of the Social Security system in the market." Indeed it is. To be sure, we'd have "lost" money if we had done so in early 2005 and taken all of it out this morning. Then again, we'd have lost money anyway since, in lieu of investing it in stocks, we're ...

Moody’s Says U.S. Credit Rating At Risk

Moody's, a credit rating agency, says the U.S. government's triple-A credit rating is jeopardy due to soaring health care expenditures and Social Security. This shouldn't be all that surprising. Think of a corporation whose expenditures are growing faster than its profits. Such a firm, generally, wont be around long. And that is precisely the problem with ...

Krugman vs. Krugman

Greg Mankiw presents a quote and article by Paul Krugman that, if you didn't know any better you'd swear were written by different people. Krugman on This Week: Paul Krugman: Social Security, if you go through the federal government, piece-by-piece, and see which programs are seriously underfunded and which are close to being completely funded, social security is one of the best. ...

The First Baby Boomer Applies for Social Security

Well, that moment that has been much talked about has finally arrived. The first member of the Baby Boomer generation has applied for social security. The nation's "first" baby boomer, a retired teacher from New Jersey, applied for Social Security benefits Monday, signaling the start of an expected avalanche of applications from the post World War II generation. Social Security Commissioner ...

The Cost of Indecision

Laurence Kotlikoff spells out what the costs are of ignoring the problems of Social Security and Medicare. Let's face it--Uncle Sam is broke. The gap between the U.S. government's future expenses and tax receipts is $63.3 trillion. No surprise. The nation has 77 million retiring baby boomers on track to collect well above $30,000 a year--the average amount we're paying today's ...

Closing the “Donut Hole” in the Senior Prescription Drug Plan

One of the worst things President Bush did in terms of the fiscal outlook for this country was to put forward the Medicare prescription drug benefit. This plan is estimated to add $8.7 trillion in unfunded liabilities to Medicare's $21 trillion in unfunded liabilities. This is money that we won't be able to pay. And one of ...

Fiscal Outlook: Grim

Via Menzie Chinn at Econbroswer comes this report from the GAO's Comptroller General, David Walker. This completely rebuts any claims by President Bush in regards to fiscal restraint. What is truly disappointing for those of us who are interested in fiscal restraint is the fourth line under Implicit Exposures. Medicare Part D is Bushes baby all the way, the ...

Nuclear Scientists’ Data Stolen

A computer hacker has stolen the names and personal information of over 1,500 nuclear scientists.A computer hacker stole a file containing the names and Social Security numbers of 1,500 people working for the Energy Department's nuclear weapons agency. Officials told a congressional hearing Friday that the department's senior managers were informed only two days ago of last September's incident, which was ...

Social Security and Illegal Immigration

Well, this item is starting to make its way around the rightward blogs. From what I can tell the gist of it is this: In calculating the Social Security benefits for people who are currently illegal aliens, but become citizens under one of these various immigration reform bills, their income and contributions to Social Security while illegal would still be ...

Little Miss Atilla On Immigration

With a name like that you might think her solution is to just unleash her Mongol hordes, but in actuallity she has two posts on the topic that I think have some very good points. In the first post Atilla Girl lists three points, ...1) secure the border; 2) streamline the legal immigration system for those who truly want to come here ...

Bruce Bartlett: Bush Is An Imposter

No, not body snatcher imposter, but an imposter in terms of being a conservative. I have been feeling this way about Bush for quite some time now. Bush's first reaction to any problem is to turn toward government. Government is what has brought about the new jobs he has been bragging about (and frankly it ain't much ...

Upping the Retirement Age

GOP Senators May Make 69 Retirement Age (AP) WASHINGTON -- Key Senate Republicans are considering gradually raising the Social Security retirement age as high as 69 over several years as they struggle to jump-start legislation that President Bush has placed atop his second-term agenda, officials said Tuesday. ... The possible increase to 69 over two decades or more was among the ...