Comments for It’s Friday Morning; That Means It’s Time to Beat Up David Brooks at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 14 out of 14 comments http://www.cepr.net Thu, 23 May 2013 06:54:34 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1924 Please give your evidence for your statement that "people are ripping off social security left and right..." and some examples of how they do this. - MitchK Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:15:50 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1857 Please refute the following criticism of your point that social security's administrative costs are lower than those of a privatized system: People are ripping off social security left and right and the government doesn't spend enough on careful administration to prevent it. If the government really started to scrutinize and evaluate social security claims, government administrative costs would rise to a level comparable to that of a privately administered system. Without arguing the other merits of a private or public system, I am skeptical that such savings really exist in the government model. Please prove me wrong. - BigAl Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:30:48 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1813 What a great column and comment section. - fuller schmidt Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:57:16 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1810 As nadezhda said "In Chile's system, the fees are front-loaded and reflect heavy sales and marketing expenses of competing AFPs (fund managers) as well as future administrative expenses." See http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/80379/james.pdf Page 41-42 - AndrewDover Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:46:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1809 My Social Security is the only political power I have, and I PAY FOR IT! - Union Member Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:29:20 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1808 We ( long-time daily readers of the NYT) are all supposed to believe and trust that Judith Miller was just an aberration. Not the norm. Not the preferred overarching Editorial stance of the Times. I know only one thing for sure: that once Social Security is gone, it ain't comm'in back. And America will be no more. Some other beast will rule this land. i can scarcely believe I have to post a comment like this. I'm just a working stiff. But I know that my VOTE doesn't count. It hasn't for years. My Social Security, however, isn't just my retirement money, it is the ONLY political power I have. Some thought that Obama was Hope for Change, including me; but something seemed rotten in the fall of '08 when David Brooks went around telling and retelling a story about a conversation he'd had with candidate Obama. The whole point of the telling of this story was so that Brooks could intellectually name drop Reinhold Niebur. Nothing more. What is any thinking person to make of this? If anyone thinks that Brooks knows or endorses anything Reinhold Niebur was about I got some aluminum tubes you can buy. And people think Glenn Beck is a sicko. Beck said one honest thing once. He described himself as a "Rodeo Clown." That is the best description of the role our media plays in our Democracy. - Union Member Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:15:50 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1807 I think the 15-20% number may be a bit misleading. I haven't worked on the Chilean system in about a decade, but during the '90s the Chilean government was quite unhappy with the cost structure of their system (as well as some corporate governance problems it presented, given the huge concentration of ownership by the funds). In Chile's system, the fees are front-loaded and reflect heavy sales and marketing expenses of competing AFPs (fund managers) as well as future administrative expenses. The sales costs are ridiculous for what is effectively a government-mandated forced-savings program. And when it's time to withdraw at retirement and roll-over into an annuity, there's another big hit. But at least a decade ago, the expense structure was in the neighborhood of an effective annual 5% of invested funds. Still ridiculously high, but not in the range that Dean's figure might suggest. I'm not sure what the "benefits paid out annually" measurement is supposed to suggest, but one would expect a front-loaded system that's always growing is going to have a higher percentage vis a vis payouts than one that spreads its charges over time. So in trying to make US SocSec charges comparable to the fees in the Chilean system, we may have actually produced apples and cumquats. However, there's no question that privatized mandatory pension funds have generally involved much higher sales and administrative costs than the equivalent government-administered program without achieving significantly higher returns to participants when measured over decades (rather than periods dominated by bull equity markets). Though Chile certainly got some benefits from its privatized pension scheme, for a country with an reasonably-functioning public retirement scheme, copying Chile would be a very bad deal for everybody but the financial sector, as most Chilean economists (other than the Chicago school guys) would tell you. - nadezhda Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:53:47 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1806 Yeah, Izzatzo, you're absolutely right. - Ryan Toso Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:39:28 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1805 See page 227 of http://www.pensions-institute.org/workingpapers/wp0004.pdf for the justification of how some people were misled into buying dishonest pension schemes with horrible cost ratios. However, Dean should not project 15% onto all private pensions schemes in the UK. - AndrewDover Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:08:01 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1804 The ultimate economic "freedom" manifests in absolute advantage, by avoiding comparative advantage, and can be deadly as in North Korea, or willfully ignorant of reality as with "energy independence" in the US. Efficiency be damned if competition and trade can be corrupted to avoid comparative advantage in return for absolute amounts of concentrated wealth for the few extracted from concentrated markets for the many. Efficiency has also evolved to depend on technologies dominated by natural and network monopolies to achieve scale and scope economies which cannot be achieved in competitive markets, simply because too many providers drives up the unit cost. Yet the regulation of these markets necessary to mimic competitive outcomes and distribute efficiency gains to society, instead has been captured by the ultra rich as well. If they're not avoiding competition, then they're avoiding effective regulation, either one to concentrate wealth by extracting efficiency gains or preventing them in the first place. Popular claims of threats to "freedoms" couched in teabaggerist fears of "big government" are shameful, vulgar caricatures of economic freedoms that existed in prior decades of the US, before 1% of the population acquired over 90% of the wealth. Since when did economic "freedom" mean the freedom of the ultra rich to undermine comparative advantage, trade, competition and ultimately economic efficiency, in the name of being "free" in an absolute sense, to dominate and reduce the freedoms of everyone else? - izzatzo Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:04:43 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1803 "There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary and those who don't." In an America not dominated by corporate media and their top-down framings, Mr. Brooks' commentaries would be considered humor, like the quote above. If only we lived in such an alternative reality ... - S. Druben Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:25:38 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1802 Where is the reference for this wild statement: "By contrast, the administrative costs of privatized systems like the ones in Chile and the U.K. are on the order of 15-20 percent of the benefits paid out annually." - AndrewDover Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:07:36 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1800 As Thomas Hardy wrote: The truth told cleverly is the greatest lie Mr. Brooks and his forebears in our newspapers and in our schools have told working people their clever truth. Shall we just stop listen? - Scott ffolliott Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:25:59 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/its-friday-morning-that-means-its-time-to-beat-up-david-brooks#comment-1798 the other weird thing about anti-government propaganda is that we are the government- it would be one thing to argue under fascism that government power needs to be limited, but quite another under co-governance- the most facile understanding of human affairs knows that power expands when we work together, and that this has driven civilization- arguing that we need less government in this case is sort of like the religious propaganda that we shouldn't try to encroach on god's sovereignty (although the malaysian towers make the tower of babel look like an anthill)- just modernize it by filling in "goldman" for "god" - frankenduf Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:11:24 +0100