The two papers that make up the core of this book address what is perhaps the most fundamental question in the current debate over Social Security: whether to shift, in part or even entirely, from today's pay-as-you-go system to one that is not just funded but also privatized in the sense that individuals would retain control over the investment of their funds and, therefore, personally bear the associated risk. John Shoven argues yes, Henry Aaron no. Theoretical issues such as the likely effects on saving behavior and capital formation figure importantly in this discussion. But so do a broad array of practical considerations such as the expense of fund management and accounting, questions about how the public would regard the fairness of any new system, and the impact of recent developments in the federal budget and the U.S. stock market.
The book also includes responses to both papers by four prominent economists―Robert J. Barro and David M. Cutler, of Harvard University; Alicia H. Munnell, of Boston College; and James Tobin, of Yale University―as well as Henry Aaron's and John Shoven's replies. The introductory remarks are by Benjamin M. Friedman.

Should the United States Privatize Social Security? (Alvin Hansen Symposium Series on Public Policy)

Business & Money

Shoven, Mr. John B.

Aaron, Henry J.

Economics

MIT Press]

Why did President Clinton's efforts to reform the financing of American health care fail? For years to come, politicians and scholars of public policy will revisit the debate over Clinton's health care plan. What did planners do right? And what did they do wrong? How can the mistakes of that experience be avoided in the future? What steps can now be taken to achieve some measure of reform in smaller pieces? In The Problem That Won't Go Away, economists, political scientists, sociologists, public opinion experts, and government staff offer answers to these and other crucial questions. They recount the history of the Clinton health care plan, present several alternative strategies the administration might have pursued, and conclude that none was likely to achieve the administration's goals of universal coverage and cost containment. Many support the view that the administration, Congress, and the nation lacked the political consensus and the information to credibly describe the effects of any single bill to reform the U.S. health care system. In that case, was the only option available to the administration to reach for goals far more modest than those it sought? Health care financing as a national political issue will not go away. Pressure to cut public spending to balance the budget means that medicare and medicaid will stay in the legislative spotlight; the retirement of the baby-boom generation in the beginning of the next century promises large increases in the cost of medicare; and a flood of new and costly medical technologies will continue to put financial pressure on everyone responsible for paying for health insurance. But, as this book illustrates, the nature of the debate inthe years after the demise of the Clinton plan will be altogether different from that of the past several decades.

The Problem That Won't Go Away: Reforming U. S. Health Care Financing

Industries

Brookings Inst Pr

How Taxes Affect Economic Behavior

Shelter and Subsidies: Who Benefits from Federal Housing Policies?

Brookings Institution

Shelter and subsidies;: Who benefits from Federal housing policies? (Studies in social economics)

After discussing the failure of Congress to develop an effectual welfare program, the author suggests a system providing work incentives plus cash, housing, and medical assistance. Bibliogs

Why Is Welfare So Hard to Reform?

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Inflation and the income tax: A report of a conference sponsored by the fund for Public Policy Research and the Brookings Institution (Studies of government finance : Second series)

In the early 1960s America was in a confident mood and embarked on a series of efforts to solve the problems of poverty, racial discrimination, unemployment, and inequality of educational opportunity. The programs of the Great Society and the War on Poverty were undergirded by a broad consensus about what our problems as a nation were and how we should solve them. But by the early seventies both political and scholarly tides had shifted. Americans were divided and uncertain about what to do abroad, fearful of military inferiority, and pessimistic about the capacity of government to deal affirmatively with domestic problems. A new administration renounced the rhetoric of the Great Society and changed the emphasis of many programs. On the scholarly front, new research called into question the old faiths on which liberal legislation had been based. In this book, the sixteenth volume in the Brookings series in Social Economics, Henry Aaron describes both the initial consensus and its subsequent decline. He examines the evolution of attitude and pronouncements by scholars and popular writers on the role of the federal government and its capacity to bring about beneficial change in three broad areas: poverty and discrimination, education and training, and unemployment and inflation. He argues that the political eclipse of the Great Society depended more on events external to it--war in Vietnam, dissolution of the civil rights coalition, and, finally, the Watergate scandal and all its repercussions--than on its intrinsic failings. Aaron concludes that both the initial commitment to use national polices to solve social and economic problems and the subsequent disillusionment of scholars andlaymen alike rest largely on preconceptions and faiths that have little to do with research themselves.

Politics and the Professors: The Great Society in Perspective

Economic Effects of Social Security

Politics & Government

Painful Prescription: Rationing Hospital Care

Schwartz, William B.

Sshwartz, William B.

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