No comments about Legislative Oversight and Budgeting: A World Perspective (WBI Development Studies).

No comments about TPM for the Lean Factory: Innovative Methods and Worksheets for Equipment Management (Time-Tested Equipment Management Titles!).

5 comments about Social Security: The Phony Crisis (Black Literature and Culture).

1. The authors do a wonderful job of ignoring one vital fact - how Social Security actually works.
   
   Social Security is an intergenerational welfare program.
   
   Money is taken from the young, and given to retired people.
   
   The number of retired people will increase tremendously in the next few years as the generational wave (aka baby boomers) start to retire.
   
   This means that young people will have to pay more to keep Social Security running. At the same time, there are no armies of younger children to provide retirement money for today's working people.
   
   Social Security eats the young for the benefit of the old.
   
   As the authors note, excess Social Security collections are used to buy government debt. This forms the "Trust Fund".
   
   Here is what the government itself says about the "trust fund".
   
   This quote is from Status of the Social Security and Medicaid Programs (2004). "Since neither the interest paid on the Treasury bonds held in the HI and OASDI Trust Funds, nor their redemption, provides any net new income to the Treasury, the full amount of the required Treasury payments to these trust funds must be financed by increased taxation, increased Federal borrowing and debt, and/or a reduction in other government expenditures."
   
   After 2016, there will be more money paid out of Social Security to retirees and survivors than taken in by the 12.4% tax.
   
   To pay for Social Security, the government either has to increase taxes, borrow money, or reduce expenses.
   
   It is that simple. To keep Social Security going, we have to enslave young people.
   
   Any volunteers?
   
   Peter Simmons Author The Next Crash



2. This book is more of a left-wing diatribe then real, intelligent economic analysis.



3. I have often heard the jeremiads about social security that through shear repetition hope to gain acceptance. Most significantly we hear that demographics doom social security as the large aging population will dwarf the new workforce and push it into bankruptcy. Baker and Weisbrot use detailed actuarial and labor force statistics to demonstrate that increases in average worker income will more than offset the increases in future recipients. Perhaps Italy and Japan will have those issues but Americans have more children and more immigrants and we shall have sufficient workers to cover the costs of benefits. Why don't the conservative forecasters suggest that we raise the maximum incomes for SS tax if they are concerned about its solvency. I do not want to repeat the arguments of Baker and Weisbrot since they state the case so effectively. The other amazing aspect of the book is that it applies so well to the 2005 privatization debate even though it was writter 6-7 years earlier.



4. Well, it's now 2007, and there's very little doubt by anyone (even left-wing nut jobs like these guys) that if something is not done, the Social Security system WILL FAIL. How many people bought into their flat earth diatribe? These guys are probably related to the fellows who wrote the 1943 book: "Splitting the Atom: Junk Science". The book unfortunately is wishful thinking, spun around manipulated data. Propaganda, not misinterpreted information.



5. There are some reviews listed by people who seem to be under the spell of the illusory "free markets." They seem to think that putting "must-have" money into risky investments like the stock market is a great idea. They are missing an important statistical fact when they quote the return on the US stock market, and that is that any average you calculate for a given period will be less for non-elite investors. Through insider trading and superior knowledge, better off investors do far better than non-elite investors. This has been conclusively demonstrated by research into 401k returns and is called the "yield disparity." It is one major reason, in addition to companies contributing less to 401ks than they did to pensions, why so many people's retirement in the US is at risk. Furthermore, all the major investment banks know this, and they are still pushing for to take over the social security system for their own purposes.
   
   As far as calling the authors left wing or crackpots. I can tell you the work done by Dean Baker and by the Center for Economic and Policy reseach is some of the best economics done in the country. They are one of the few economic institutes of note who have not sold out to large power interests. If you sit in the top 2% of wealth in the country, go ahead and call them names. You need to, because their facts can not be argued away so easily. However, the rest need to wake up. If you are part of the rest of population (the other 98%) of the country in income and agree with Social Security "reform" you either don't know what is intended for Social Security (i.e. handing it over to wall street) or did not understand the arguments expressed in this book.

1 comments about Public Economics.

1. This is a solid treatment of public economic theory as it has developed since the work of Samuelson. The book starts by developing the general equilibrium approach to studying public economics and proceeds to relax assumptions and introduce new ideas. Most big topics in public econ are treated to some extent.

   The book is aimed at graduate students or advanced undergrads. For the latter use one would really require supplementary material introducing some major empirical trends in public finance, unless the students have had it already.

   The flipside of the breadth of the book is that its depth is limited on some important topics. Naturally different people have different beliefs about the appropriate stress, but incomplete information in particular received nowhere near the treatment it should have. There's some mention, and naturally some comes through in the treatment of optimal taxation, but it's not enough to enable someone to make any sense of the many and important results treating public econ from a mechanism design standpoint, which is a reasonable goal for a book like this. Bayesian equilibrium is not even formally defined. Laffont's text _Fundamentals of Public Economics_ has some more emphasis on this (his _Economics of Information and Uncertainty_ has even more, though not specifically from a public econ perspective). Chapter 6 of Myerson's _Game Theory_ and chapter 7 of Fudenberg & Tirole's _Game Theory_ may be useful supplements also.

3 comments about Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization.

1. This books is an excellent follow-up of the Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century. It helped me visual and understand the provisionary measures needed to bring about GPGs.



2. Global Public Goods and Multilateralism must intertwine in order for progress and provision to come about. This is an idea that is so often neglected and forgotten. This book places an importance role that nations must carry out...it also provides recommendations for issues that arise in the midst of GPG provision. This book does not negate the global issues that exist within and surrounding the international realm...yet the book does a fabulous job on highlighting the importance of addressing these issues as a means of furthering the progress of Global Public Goods.



3. I think that this book closes the knowledge gap surrounding this topic. It is one thing to theorize about the benefits or negative impacts of global public goods (or bads) and another to suggest ways to go about dealing with GPG. This book is extremely enlightening and presents realistic solutions!

No comments about The Secret Chamber or the Public Square? What Can Be Done to Make Tax Analysis and Revenue Estimation More Transparent and Accurate.

No comments about Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy.

No comments about Innovative Financing for Development.

No comments about Public Finance: A Contemporary Application of Theory to Policy (Dryden Press Series in Finance).

No comments about The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics.