Earlier this month, Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson complained about the lack of creative thinking concerning the issue of social security. “Washington’s vaunted think tanks — citadels for public intellectuals both liberal and conservative — have tiptoed around the problem,” he wrote. “Ideally, think tanks expand the public conversation by saying things too controversial for politicians to say on their own. Here, they’ve abdicated that role.”
As though on cue, in the publications pipeline at the time was the latest in Acton’s Christian Social Thought Series, Pensions, Population, and Prosperity by Oskari Juurikkala.
Samuelson states the issue that befuddles policy wonks: “The aging of America is not just a population change or, as a budget problem, an accounting exercise. It involves a profound transformation of the nature of government: Commitments to the older population are slowly overwhelming other public goals; the national government is becoming mainly an income-transfer mechanism from younger workers to older retirees.”
A problem of such proportions requires an innovative solution. Juurikkala combines a closely reasoned analysis of current pension systems around the world with a bold and radical proposal to shift responsibility for old-age care away from the state and back to the family. It’s the only way, he argues, to create a “social security system” that is at once durable and humane.
