Women, the White House and Social Security
Darcy Ann OlsenAt last week’s White House conference on women and retirement, President Clinton delivered two messages: women depend disproportionately on Social Security at retirement, and Social...
View ArticleThink about the Children: Privatize Social Security
Carrie LipsIn politics these days, just about every issue is talked about in terms of “the children.” A case in point was President Clinton’s State of the Union Address in which almost everything —...
View ArticleSocial Security or Environmental Socialism?
Patrick J. MichaelsLet’s stipulate that President Clinton, who has proposed investing Social Security trust fund money in the stock market, really won’t have anything to do with it. He’ll be out of...
View ArticleHow Uniformity Deals with Diversity: Does One Size Fit All?
Darcy Ann OlsenMr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, colleagues: Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee to address Social Security’s impact on different types of...
View ArticleDisparate Impact: Social Security and African Americans
Michael D. TannerExecutive SummaryPerhaps no group has as much at stake in the debate over Social Security reform as do African Americans. Elderly African Americans are much more likely than their...
View ArticleThe Promise of Privatization
Andrew G. BiggsCritics of Social Security privatization will say almost anything to kill the idea. Their latest claim is that letting workers invest part of their Social Security taxes in...
View ArticleSocial Security Privatization: Bad for the Disabled?
Andrew G. Biggs Critics of Social Security privatization will say almost anything to make sure this good idea never becomes law. Their latest claim is that letting workers invest part of their Social...
View ArticleAfrican-American Support for Social Security Grows
Edward H. Crane Jesse Jackson once famously commented that capitalism without the capital is just another ”ism.” True enough. Which makes it all the more frustrating that so many old school...
View ArticleClose the Government Pension Loophole for Texas Teachers
Andrew G. Biggs This week Congress will attempt to close a loophole in Social Security law that has allowed teachers in Texas to collect tens of thousands of dollars in extra retirement benefits for...
View Article"Totalization" No Threat to Social Security
Michael D. Tanner The Mexicans are coming, and they are going to take away our Social Security. So say the latest warnings from anti-immigration alarmists. But, as with previous claims that immigrants...
View ArticleElection Shows the Third Rail Is Dead
Michael D. Tanner The late House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill famously termed Social Security the “third rail of American politics” because it brought certain death to any candidate who might touch it....
View ArticleTurning Off the 'Third Rail'
Michael D. Tanner President Bush’s re- election may finally have turned off the juice to “the third rail of American politics” and opened the way to Social Security reform. The late House Speaker...
View ArticleMyths About Social Security
Alan Reynolds When it comes to Social Security, Robert Bixby of the Concord Coalition sees too little choice between do-nothing Democrats and free-lunch Republicans. Bixby has a point: If all the...
View ArticleMemo to Karl Rove
Edward H. CraneBob Novak, writing about Terry Schiavo last month, inadvertently summed up the problem with the administration’s Social Security reform strategy when he wrote, “This is not the cold,...
View ArticleMichael Tanner's Testimony on Social Security Reformbefore the House Ways and...
Michael D. TannerI very much appreciate the privilege of appearing before you today, and the opportunity to discuss how Social Security reform can benefit vulnerable populations. It is now generally...
View ArticleSocial Security's Sham Guarantee
Michael D. TannerHow many times during the recent debate over Social Security reform have you heard someone refer to Social Security’s “guaranteed benefit”? The AARP says “Social Security is the...
View ArticleThe Big Three
Arnold Kling“We have been inexorably centralizing control over the schools in this country for 150 years. We’ve gone from one-room schoolhouses overseen directly by the parents of the children who...
View ArticleThe Real Costs Of Social Security
James A. DornWhen President Obama told the nation last week that Social Security could be put on a sound basis with minor changes, he forgot to tell Americans about the real costs of that...
View ArticleDisability Insurance Must Be Restructured to Protect Vulnerable, Incentivize...
Jagadeesh GokhaleJobs lost during the recent recession caused a deluge of applications to the Social Security Disability Insurance program — more than 6 million each year in 2009 and 2010 — and threw...
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