Under reasonable projections, the unified budget deficits over the next decade will average 3.5 percent of GDP. Compared to a balanced budget, the unified budget deficits will reduce annual national income a decade hence by 1 to 2 percent (or roughly $1,500 to $3,000 per household per year, on...

In a campaign speech given in Iowa, George Akerlof argues that the Bush administration has hamstrung its good administrators and opted time and again for waving a magic wand to solve problems instead of facing reality. The problem may be most severe in the case of the deficits, where if we don't...

Social Security privatization, in any form, will only highlight the problems that individuals face when left on their own to make saving and investment decisions. The 401(k) experience is a case in point. Making everyone a money manager is not the way to improve retirement income security for an...

The funding troubles of Social Security have been greatly exaggerated in an effort to push a privatization agenda. Privatization has laudable goals—increased choice and higher returns—but few would choose to risk their secure retirement income and unfortunately higher returns cannot be...

The U.S. economy is now on a sound footing for sustained expansion. This is a remarkable state of affairs in light of the powerful contractionary forces that have been at work since early 2000 — the bursting of the high-tech bubble of the 1990s, corporate scandals, slow growth among our major...

There is a lot of confusion in the debate over Social Security privatization, much of it deliberate. This essay discusses the meaning of the trust fund, which privatizers declare either real or fictional at their convenience; the likely rate of return on private accounts, which has been greatly...

The Social Security trust fund is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

In his article on President Bush’s second term economic agenda, Professor Mankiw is vague and misleading with regard to the costs and benefits of partial privatization of social security reform. There are other, simpler ways to fix the problem of Social Security which Mankiw fails to mention....

Edward Lazear’s analysis of the virtues of private accounts for social security exagerates the degree to which African Americans subsidize white Americans and largely ignores the value of Social Security as an annuity that individual beneficiaries cannot exhaust.

Social Security is one of America’s most successful government programs. It has helped millions of Americans avoid poverty in old age. To be sure, the program faces a long-term deficit and is in need of updating. But Social Security’s long-term financial health can be restored: the projected...