Andrew Biggs explains that the U.S. Social Security program is welfare for the rich. A slice:
Federal spending on retirement benefits is running riot. Social Security swallows nearly a quarter of the federal budget and is less than a decade away from insolvency. The government loses hundreds of billions per year on tax breaks for retirement savings.
And who gets most of this money? It isn’t the most vulnerable seniors. It’s the richest.
The wealthiest fifth of households receives 38 percent of taxpayer dollars spent on Social Security and retirement tax preferences, more than the bottom 60 percent. But Congress can solve the problem by capping federal retirement benefits at middle-class levels. The change would eliminate most of Social Security’s funding gap, reduce federal deficits and improve economic growth — all without threatening low- and middle-income seniors.
Though it is intended to be a safety-net program, Social Security drives the bulk of this inequality. The highest-earning quintile of Americans born in the 1960s will receive $33,000 in annual Social Security benefits, compared with just $13,000 for the lowest. Affluent Americans also collect more checks in their lifetimes. On average, a wealthy 62-year-old can expect to live to be roughly 88, while the poorest Americans the same age live only to around 80. Since top earners collect more and live longer, they take 33 percent of total Social Security benefits, leaving a mere 8 percent for the lowest-earning quintile.
GMU Econ alum Bryan Cutsinger reports that inflation remains troubling high.
My GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan ponders the ‘externalities’ of airports and of immigrants.
Christian Britschgi draws lessons from opposition to data centers, and opposition to Flock cameras. Two slices:
It might be tempting to lump these two backlashes into a generalized revolt against technology.
But polling on AI and tech companies generally shows only a modest cooling of the public’s attitude toward them. Nothing like the sharp collapse in public support we’ve seen for Flock and data centers specifically.
When people are asked why they oppose data centers, environmental concerns are top of the list, not an opposition to technology.
Instead, what we’re seeing appears to be popular revolts against two things Americans like to get panicked about: Big Brother and Big Development.
People naturally object to the government spying on them. They’re also primed to oppose new construction, regardless of what’s being built.
In a country witnessing a massive boom in data center construction and a comprehensive nationwide rollout of ALPRs, a bottom-up, popular revolt was perhaps inevitable.
And to be clear, these are popular, bottom-up revolts.
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If the revolt against Flock and data centers demonstrates the power of populism to move politicians on an issue, it also highlights the limits of populism for protecting liberty.
There’s a world of difference between the government tracking citizens in public and landowners developing their private property. An angry populace isn’t making those distinctions.
ALPR technology poses serious privacy concerns. Its many misuses and abuses are scandalous. The public’s turn against it is provoking a belated conversation about the benefits, costs, and constitutionality of the 120,000 Flock cameras already in the field.
It’s far harder to see anything positive in the sudden revolt against data centers.
These facilities’ critics are not stopping at demanding more mitigation of their relatively few externalities. Nor are they simply calling for an end to unfair subsidies or tax credits some data center projects receive.
Instead, people’s misplaced concerns about data centers’ overhyped environmental impacts are leading states and localities to impose some of the tightest land use restrictions on one of the more innocuous forms of development imaginable.
About the newly announced U.S. government stake in a Venezuelan oil company, Scott Lincicome tweets:
So, after taking 31 US government equity stakes in private companies over the last year, Trump just announced a MAJORITY-STATE-OWNED oil company?
This isn’t even “creeping” socialism anymore.
