22 February 2017

The Night of the Living Dead Is Coming: America's Pension CrisES

If you didn't buy what I was selling about America's multiple pension crises herehere, and here, check out George Will here. A concluding teaser:
The problems of state and local pensions are cumulatively huge. The problems of Social Security and Medicare are each huge, but in 2016 neither candidate addressed them, and today's White House chief of staff vows that the administration will not "meddle" with either program. Demography, however, is destiny for entitlements, so arithmetic will do the meddling.

The combination of subterranean promises to politically favored groups, unrealistic assumptions about rates of return on investments, and the declining middle-class birthrate makes the question of a fiscal cliff not one of if but of when. For now, though, we can count on all our political elites to sweep the problem under the rug.

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