National Debt Part III: Radical Reform of Social Security

Radical Reform of Social Security requires starting at the root, and that root is its real purpose and goals today, in 2010. What are we really trying to accomplish with this program? What are the basic problems for which we should supply social safety nets, and how do we best supply and sustain them?

2010 is more like the 1935 of Social Security’s birth during the Great Depression than any other time in American history so far. It is a time of Great Recession, when macroeconomic events have created new poverty and exacerbated old. Unemployment has destroyed wage income, and plummeting stock markets have devastated savings from ...

Addressing National Debt by Reforming Social Security

FDR Signing Social Security Act August 14, 1935

Government deficits and debt have reached alarming levels today, and the unfunded liabilities of tomorrow are even more staggering. The key to attaining fiscal sobriety is entitlement reform, and Social Security is as good a place to start as any.

Established in 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, Social Security was FDR’s strong response to the difficulties experienced by the elderly, ...

Blind Men and Elephants in the Room: How Much Should We Worry about the Public Debt?

President Obama is expected to announce today a $3.8 trillion budget with a $1.2 trillion deficit for FY2011. Here’s the context within which he will reveal his plan. For decades now, the federal debt acquired through years and years of deficit spending has been the “elephant in the room” – the huge presence nobody talks about but everyone knows is there. In last week’s State of the Union address, however, debt joined unemployment as the two most urgent issues facing America as Obama enters his second year as our President.

Last year, the White House and Congress went “Keynesian” in a big way as the real-estate bubble popped and ...

Made with China

I dreamed I was a butterfly

…Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being  a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

Barack Obama, our first (soi-disant) Pacific President, has just been lectured by the Premier of  Communist China about the need for fiscal discipline at home.  Earlier in the year, Tim Geithner, our Treasury Secretary, was laughed at when he assured his normally polite Chinese audience that the American dollar is strong and they need not worry about the yuan value of all their investments in America.  Meantime, we accuse China of willfully poisoning our pets as well as our people.  Its ...

Debt, Deficits and Dangerous Economic Times Ahead

When President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on February 17, 2009, among other things he declared that …

“While we need to do everything in the short term to get our economy moving again, we must recognize that having inherited a trillion dollar deficit, we need to begin restoring fiscal discipline and taming our exploding deficits over the long term.”

But when do we actually begin this process? Since January, we have seen a ballooning of government spending, the stimulus package, health care “reform” and numerous banking and corporate bailouts. Our government, which forecasted 10-year budget deficits of $7 trillion in January, now tells us it is likely more ...