by Romina Boccia and Ivane Nachkebia, Cato at Liberty, September 5, 2024.
Excerpt:
The article fails to acknowledge the whole substitute charge of the US retirement system, which incorporates each Social Safety and voluntary pensions. When contemplating this broader perspective, the US method replaces greater than 73 % of pre-retirement earnings for common staff, considerably greater than the OECD common of 55.3 %. This locations the US forward of many nations, together with some with extra strong government-run programs.
For instance, the article reveals that French public pensions change 57.6 % of pre-retirement earnings of a mean employee, in comparison with Social Safety’s 39.1 % substitute charge. (As talked about, when voluntary pensions are included, the whole substitute charge for the US retirement system exceeds 73 %.) Alternatively, the French system stays at 57.6 % because of the restricted protection of voluntary pensions, so low that the OECD doesn’t issue them into whole substitute charge calculations. OECD knowledge additionally spotlight that American seniors are far much less depending on authorities for his or her retirement earnings in comparison with their French counterparts. Public advantages make up 39.3 % of American seniors’ whole earnings, whereas in France, they account for 78.1 %.
DRH remark: This text is attention-grabbing in one other approach additionally. It reveals a considerable diploma of understanding amongst Individuals that they’ll’t rely upon Social Safety for a big % of their retirement earnings.
Excerpt:
As Thomas Hazlett wrote in a 1983 article for the Wall Road Journal, W.H. Hutt “may be the most important economist of this century.” Hutt’s College of Dallas colleague Samuel Bostaph prophesied that Hutt may be some of the essential economists of the twenty-first. Economists who know W.H. Hutt doubtless solely know him as a result of he popularized the phrase “consumers’ sovereignty.” That is unlucky as a result of he made many extra substantial contributions that deserve revisiting within the twenty first century. They nonetheless have a lot to show us about how free societies perform and flourish.
Private be aware: I used to be at 3 completely different weeklong seminars with Hutt. The primary was the primary Austrian Economics convention in South Royalton, Vermont in June 1974. The second was a Liberty Fund seminar (and the primary one I ever attended) at Ohio College in Athens, Ohio in June 1975. The third was instantly after and, certainly, he, his pretty spouse, and I marched by means of an airport collectively to catch a flight to attend it. It was the second Austrian Economics convention, held at Hartford School in Hartford, Connecticut. Though I used to be very impressed with him, I had solely an inkling of an thought on the time of his significance.
The second of those new theories-and the newest entry within the competitors for the hearts and minds of political candidates-is a set of financial concepts and coverage suggestions that goes by the identify “industrial policy.” It has been the topic of a rising stream of books and articles; it has been endorsed as an idea by the AFL-CIO; its precepts have been included in plenty of payments now earlier than the Congress; and it’s receiving a sympathetic listening to from lots of the candidates for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination.
The phrase “industrial policy” means considerably various things to completely different individuals; it refers not a lot to a single concept as to a free assortment of comparable diagnoses and proposals. The diagnoses typically cluster round two primary propositions:
DRH remark: That is an oldie however goodie. I reread it whereas writing my newest Substack submit, “Brad Delong’s Unsatisfactory Case for an Industrial Policy,” I Weblog to Differ, September 8, 2024. It’s full of fine content material. I learn it once I was researching trade coverage whereas I used to be a senior economist with President Reagan’s Council of Financial Advisers. It affected my work in two methods. First, I drew on it in writing my first article for Fortune, “The Myth of MITI,” August 8, 1983. I quote from that piece right here. Second, I used to be one of many individuals on the CEA pushing arduous for a chapter on industrial coverage. My aspect received and we wrote it. I wrote the primary draft and it was thrown into the trash can as being too primary. (I in the end agreed.) However I had plenty of enter on the model that lastly emerged. Certainly, I made it into a chat that I gave to college students on the Naval Postgraduate College in February 1984, a chat that led to my getting a suggestion to be on the college.
