Monday, March 28, 2005

Conservative Intellectuals Splitting on Social Security

WP

President Bush's proposal to add private investment accounts to Social Security is beginning to create controversy within the one group that has most forcefully embraced the idea in theory: the conservative intelligentsia.

Under Bush's approach, personal accounts "are complicated," wrote Alex J. Pollock, a finance expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, in a paper he will present at AEI today.

"To many people, they are downright confusing and even frightening, and they require diverting a portion of payroll taxes away from the U.S. Treasury."Conservative Harvard University economist Robert J. Barro broke with the White House in the April 4 issue of Business Week, writing, "Overall the accounts are a bad idea."

Tyler Cowen, a free-market economist at George Mason University, has linked his Web log, Marginal Revolution, to Barro's dissent, declaring, "Robert Barro agrees with me on Social Security."

(snip)

"For different reasons, I think support is waning," said Barro, who for years had embraced private accounts.

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