Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'social security'

January 28, 2011

What We Have Here is a Failure of Political Leadership

In yesterday’s edition of the Grand Rapids Press, editorial page editor Ed Golder reflects on the implications of the historically-high levels of government spending, the deficit, and debt. Most impressively, Golder notes where the government is actually spending money, and it is largely not in the areas of discretionary spending that so many politicians like to talk about. Continue Reading...
November 04, 2010

Video: Sirico on Christian Anthropology (and some thoughts on Election 2010)

Another election has come and gone, and once again the balance of power has significantly shifted in Washington, D.C. and statehouses across America.  Tuesday’s results are, I suppose, a win for fans of limited government, in that a Republican House of Representatives will make it more difficult for President Obama and his Democrat colleagues in the Congress to enact more of what has been a very statist agenda.   Continue Reading...
October 30, 2009

The Hidden Tithe

Recently I got a phone call from an engineering manager I’ve known for over ten years. He informed me that he’d been laid off last spring, but before I could offer condolences he added that he’d been hired by another company in the same industry for a consulting assignment. Continue Reading...
April 01, 2009

Acton Commentary: An Ode to Power

“Power permits people to do enormous good,” Lord Acton once said, “and absolute power enables them to do even more.” This wisdom from the nineteenth-century’s champion of state prerogative applies as well today. Continue Reading...
December 23, 2008

Ponnuru on Ponzi and Pyramids

Ramesh Ponnuru says Social Security is worse than a Ponzi scheme. He’s right. It’s more like an inter-generational pyramid scheme, a pyramid tipped on its side… To be sustainable, over time (T) it has to take more from more people (thus a three-dimensional pyramid rather than a two-dimensional triangle. Continue Reading...
June 10, 2008

The Pact

It might seem like ancient political history to younger readers, but once upon a time there was a Republican Speaker of the House named Newt Gingrich and a Democratic President named Bill Clinton. Continue Reading...
March 27, 2008

Pollyanna Krugman

In my commentary on Social Security yesterday, I referred to the latest trustees’ report as evidence of the continuing need for reform. Anyone who happened to see New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s blog a day earlier might understandably wonder whether we were looking at the same report. Continue Reading...
September 29, 2006

Treading Water on Social Security

According to Census Bureau estimates, the population of the United States will hit 300,000,000 sometime in the next couple weeks. Discussion of the significance of this demographic milestone, such as the latest issue of US News & World Report brings to mind a related topic: social security. Continue Reading...
August 30, 2006

The Real Third Rail in Politics

In this week’s Acton Commentary, Jennifer Roback Morse wonders why no one is talking about the Forbidden Topic in the Social Security debate. That taboo subject is the declining birth rate. Continue Reading...