Archive for John Attarian
Is Social Security Reform Paternalistic?
One great, and valid, complaint about Social Security is that it is paternalistic: it does things for the individual that he should do for himself. In so doing, it commits the twin transgressions of forcing some people to support others and making the beneficiaries the servile dependents of the state.
1Jan2004 | John Attarian | 1 comment | ContinuedSocial Security: Mythmaking and Policymaking
Beginning in 1935, when Social Security was enacted, the program’s administrators made a huge effort to shape the public’s understanding of and beliefs about it. In speeches, articles, pamphlets, and other mass-circulation literature, they described Social Security as “insurance” under which workers pay “contributions” or “premiums” to receive “guaranteed” benefits that, being “paid for,” are theirs “as a matter of earned right,” without any means test.1
1Dec2003 | John Attarian | 7 comments | ContinuedThe Power to Destroy
The Internal Revenue Service penalizes a taxpayer $46,806 for an alleged underpayment of ten cents. Armed IRS agents storm the homes of a restaurant owner and his manager because of unsubstantiated charges from a fired ex-employee that the men were drug dealers. A taxpayer is driven to suicide by the IRS’s hounding after it had [...]
1Oct2000 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Myth of the Social Security Trust Fund
John Attarian is a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a Ph.D. in economics. Under a grant from the Earhart Foundation, he has completed a book on Social Security, from which parts of this article are adapted. In my mail the other day, I received a hint of why Social Security reform isn’t happening. [...]
1Mar2000 | John Attarian | 5 comments | ContinuedA New Deal for Social Security by Peter Ferrara and Michael Tanner
Cato Institute • 1998 • 264 pages • $19.95 cloth; $10.95 paperback In 1980 Peter Ferrara produced the path-breaking critique Social Security: The Inherent Contradiction. Now he and the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner ably update his exposition of Social Security’s flaws and offer a thought-provoking solution. Social Security is a federal “social insurance’‘ program paying [...]
1Jan2000 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedFor Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health by Jacob Sullum
The Free Press • 1998 • 288 pages • $25.00 John Attarian is a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and an adjunct scholar with the Midland, Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Hounded by billboards and other “public-service” exhortations, barred from lighting up almost everywhere but in their own cars and homes, and saddled [...]
1Mar1999 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedSmuggled Cigarettes, Unteachable Politicians
John Attarian is an adjunct scholar with the Midland, Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and a nonsmoker. “Only one thing in history is certain: that mankind is unteachable,” Winston Churchill told his dinner guests one night in January 1941.[1] He was discussing international relations, but it goes for politicians’ economic blunders, too. Indeed, Churchill’s [...]
1Sep1998 | John Attarian | 7 comments | ContinuedDrawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber
John Attarian is a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and an adjunct scholar with the Midland, Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy. David Gelernter was a busy associate professor of computer science at Yale University, an artistic man who had entered software research because he wanted a trade. Then, going through his mail on [...]
1Jul1998 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedReputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct edited by Daniel B. Klein
University of Michigan Press • 1997 • 318 pages • $57.50 cloth; $19.95 paperback John Attarian is a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “But a free market just can’t police itself. That’s why we need government regulation.” Many people find this argument plausible, even compelling. But how many stop to ask if the first [...]
1Mar1998 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Big Lie: What Every Baby Boomer Should Know About Social Security and Medicare by A. Haeworth Robertson
Retirement Policy Institute • 1997 • 137 pages • $24.95 John Attarian is a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Author A. Haeworth Robertson has fought the good fight for decades. Upon becoming Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration (SSA) in 1975, he began trying to dispel misunderstandings of Social Security by both the [...]
1Jan1998 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedLibertarianism: A Primer by David Boaz
The Free Press • 1997 • 228 pages • $23.00 Dr. Attarian is a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. With statism’s failures obvious, and Americans’ disgust with statist government and politicians burgeoning, David Boaz’s accessible book is a handy and timely introduction to an appealing alternative. Opening with a brisk presentation of essential ideas, [...]
1Aug1997 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedRestoring Hope in America: The Social Security Solution and Let’s Get Rid of Social Security: How Americans Can Take Charge of Their Own Future
Dr. Attarian is a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Most Americans now realize that when the huge Baby Boom generation retires, supported by a slower-growing Baby Bust taxpaying workforce, Social Security will go broke. Proposals are emerging to avert disaster, with most, like those here reviewed, entailing some privatization. National Development Council chairman Sam [...]
1Sep1996 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedContending With Hayek: On Liberalism, Spontaneous Order and the Post-Communist Societies in Transition
Dr. Attarian is a free-lance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Friedrich Hayek is celebrated as a scourge of socialist fallacies and a champion of liberty. As Eastern Europe’s former Communist countries pursue a freer state, what can Hayek’s ideas teach them? Those seeking answers to that question should consult this volume of essays, the result [...]
1Jun1996 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedDemocracy and Leadership
Dr. Attarian is a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. First published in 1924, Irving Babbitt’s Democracy and Leadership remains one of this century’s greatest works of political philosophy. Combining philosophy of history, a philosophy of civilization, deep reflection on human nature, and keen insights into the psychology of belief, it diagnoses modernity with matchless [...]
1May1996 | John Attarian | 3 comments | ContinuedRussell Kirk’s Economics of the Permanent Things
John Attarian is a freelance writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. While Russell Kirk (1918-1994) is properly recognized for his role in reviving American conservative thought, his ruminations on economics have received little attention. Yet he gave economics due consideration, and was a sturdy friend of economic freedom and a foe of statism. Moreover, because he [...]
1Apr1996 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: A Moral Basis for Liberty by Reverend Robert A. Sirico, CSP
Institute of Economic Affairs Health and Welfare Unit, London American distributor: The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, Grand Rapids, MI 49503 • 1994 • 38 pages • $7.50 paperback With the Soviet bloc’s collapse and the evidence of socialism’s appalling failures and human cost, capitalism seems triumphant. Francis Fukuyama even proclaimed [...]
1Sep1995 | John Attarian | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Liberalism, Conservatism, and Catholicism: An Evaluation of Contemporary American Political Ideologies in Light of Catholic Social Teaching by Stephen M. Krason
Central Bureau, Catholic Central Verein of America, 3835 Westminster Place, St. Louis, MO 63108 • 1994 • 347 pages • $15.00 paperback With politics increasingly polarized and penetrating more and more facets of life, it becomes important for American Catholics to know which doctrines and parties they can support while remaining faithful to Church teaching. [...]
1Jun1995 | John Attarian | 1 comment | Continued-
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