Unfunded liabilities in pension funds are just as onerous as other kinds of debt. Such liabilities now total more than $2.5 …
deficit
Is Stockton the Start of a Rash of Municipal Bankruptcies?
State and local borrowing amounts to only a fraction of the national debt, but while the scale may be smaller, the financial crises are much, much closer.
Should All Young Americans Be Fiscal Conservatives?
Resources keep shifting to the elderly at the expense of the young, who will end up paying off a mountain of debt while their own standard of living is eroding.
Are We Lying to Ourselves About Our Pension Problems?
Private pensions are underfunded and fading away, and the agency that insures them is itself running a record deficit. Now we learn that pension funds covering public employees are more seriously underfunded than previously believed.
How Dangerous Is America’s Debt?
The deficit needs to be trimmed, but not at the risk of austerity policies that could cause another recession — and the real long-term problem is entitlements
Canada’s Penny Is No More – Is the U.S. Penny Next?
In an effort to cut costs, the Canadian government released its 2012 budget Thursday without any money designated to fund the Canadian penny. The penny’s costs have finally grown so high that the government has realized it just …
What if Tax Rates Were Set by Lottery?
One of the big reasons people argue against raising taxes for the richest Americans is that higher taxes make people less inclined to work. The result is that raising taxes at some point doesn’t raise any more tax income for the government. This is in effect the famous Laffer Curve.
I’m not sure I believe that. I think people, …
The case against tax expenditures
There are two obvious ways to reduce the federal deficit (spend less or tax more), and then there’s the really compelling one—stop using the tax code to guide the way people make decisions. Bloomberg recently reported that the President’s debt commission is focusing “a lot” on tax expenditures—the deductions, exemptions and other tax …
