If Rates of Return Matter, Social Security Is a Goner

When President Clinton called for “a national conversation” on Social Security a few months ago, he probably didn’t expect that privatizing the whole thing would quickly become the talk of the country. But that’s exactly what has happened. The new national willingness to explore options that previously were politically untouchable now seems so promising that [...]

It Just Ain’t So!

(Jonathan Schlefer’s article can be found on the World Wide Web at www.theatlantic.com/issues/98mar/misquote.htm.) We should have an annual awards event called the “Economic Bloopers Bash.” Straight-thinking economists and others could be entertained by dramatic renderings of allegedly serious articles, official documents, and broadcasts issued during the previous twelve months. The uproar from the audience would [...]

Food for Thought

It may seem strange at first, but one of the great virtues of anything “private” is also an obstacle to making its case to a skeptical public. That virtue is this: if it’s private, it will be held to a higher standard than its “public” counterpart. Indeed, a favorite ploy of statists is to judge [...]

Free-Market Economics in a Phone Booth

Dr. Shannon is professor of economics at Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. In The Wealth of Nations, published 220 years ago, Adam Smith argued that the interests of consumers would be better served by an open system of free markets than by the regulated regime of mercantilism that prevailed. Competition, Smith maintained, was more efficient [...]

The Privatization Revolution

There’s a revolution underway. It’s worldwide, nonviolent, and pro-freedom. It’s known by a word that wasn’t even in dictionaries 20 years ago—privatization.

Privatization, in its broadest sense, is the transfer of assets or services from the tax-supported and politicized public sector to the entrepreneurial initiative and competitive markets of the private sector.

Private Cures for Public Ills: The Promise of Privatization

Professor Savas is Director, Privatization Research Organization, School of Public Affairs, Baruch College, City University of New York. This volume might well be called A Privatization Anthology, for it brings together a fine selection of articles on the subject that have appeared over the last dozen years. Most of the 24 chapters (nineteen of them) [...]