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Delay the Canonization

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Let's not rush to elevate outgoing Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to sainthood. Rubin is like a surfer who accepts credit for creating the big wave that carries him to shore. He might look good riding the board, but he's not responsible for the wave's motion. The accolades being heaped on Rubin are based on a glaring fallacy. A successful economy doesn't have an architect. It doesn't require policy activism. It requires enforcement of property rights and an otherwise hands-off policy. Any credit Rubin deserves for the economy would have to be for whatever restraint he imposed on President Clinton's and the First Lady's interventionist instincts. The Wall Street Journal says he also refrained from distracting Alan Greenspan from a policy of monetary stability. Let's give him credit for that. But there is ...

Book Review: The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America

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The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America by Paul Craig Roberts and Karen Lafollette Araujo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); 214 pages; $25. The mass media has focused public attention on the dramatic attempts to implement market-oriented reforms in Eastern Europe, Russia, and other countries in the former Soviet Union. Less attention has been given to another part of the world — Latin America — an area that has moved toward more free-market reform than anywhere in the nations formerly in the Soviet bloc. The story of this economic and political transformation south of the United States is now told in a new book, The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, by Paul Craig Roberts and Karen Lafollette Araujo. Dr. Roberts is an insightful and eloquent defender of economic and individual freedom. Long known as a leading expert on Marxism and the Soviet economy, in 1990 he co-authored with Ms. Araujo Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, in which they explained why the ...

Repealing, Not Reforming, Social Security, Part 2

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Part 1 | Part 2 What, then, do we do about Social Security? There are three general alternatives. The first is to tinker, while keeping Social Security essentially as it is. The second is to privatize the system by paying off current retirees and mandating private retirement contributions. The third is to simply repeal Social Security. First, tinkering with the Titanic. Most establishment defenders of Social Security advocate some combination of higher taxes and lower benefits. One could raise the retirement age (currently set to go to 67 in the year 2027), adjust the Consumer Price Index (which some economists argue overstates the cost of living by .5% to 1.5% a year), abolish early retirement (now available at age 62), or reduce benefits (cap the cost of living adjustment, for instance). Alternatively (or simultaneously), one could hike taxes, either raising the FICA levy or increasing income taxes on Social Security benefits (currently half of payments are subject to the income ...