The new kid on the block at The New York Times, John Tierney, looks like he may become a foil for the papers resident Social Security “expert,” Paul Krugman.
Donald Luskin notes, “After an endless parade of lies from Paul Krugman about how bad reform with personal accounts has been in Chile, Tierney actually got on a plane and checked it out himself…”
He’s so not going to fit in at The Times…
Tierney: The Proof’s in the Pension [NYT]
But at least he’s hitting them up for trips to South America while he can.
I don’t think there is any way he fits in, and that can only be good. Some of the folks at Reason think he’ll be a welcome voice.
I took a whack at the only NYT columinst crazier than Krugman, the lovely, deranged Maureen Dowd in the piece I tracbacked. She is just a perfect representative of her people.
Cordially,
Uncle J
He was a great Metro columnist for them. Very interesting libertarianish voice. I hope he continues.
Good thing Tierney doesn’t work for a university, he’d already be gone.
The article makes too much good, old fashioned common sense for the Times.
Let the witch hunt begin…
I wonder if you all just believe what you read or do you actually look for the facts. I find it pretty funny that Tierney wrote in his article “Chileans may someday long for a system like Social Security if the stock market crashes and takes their pension down with it.” How has the market been doing? Some other interesting information. If you just google chilean private accounts you will find tons of info.
For those remaining in the government’s original pay-as-you-go system, the maximum retirement benefit is now about $1,250 a month. The National Center for Alternative Development Studies, a research institute here, calculates that to get that same amount from a private pension fund, workers would have to contribute more than $250,000 over their careers, a target that has been reached by fewer than 500 of the private system’s 7 million past and present contributors.
One other thing.
This leaves many Chileans in a situation that has led to the coining of a phrase: “pension damage.” There is now even an Association of People With Pension Damage, 157,000 members and growing, that consists of Chileans, mostly former government employees, who find that their pensions, based on contributions to the private system, are significantly less than if they had remained in the old system.