That governmental Ponzi scheme

social%20security.gifAt the end of this common sense post that mostly points out that no useful public policy is served by the government denying grandparents the right to establish Health Savings Accounts for the benefit of their grandchildren, the always entertaining Art DeVany makes the following observation about a common topic on this blog — Social Security reform (previous posts are here):

By the way, there is no such thing as social security. There are only people who are more or less secure against contingencies. They might pool their risks against these contingencies, but there is no effective way for a society to avoid risk. As a program for risk pooling, Social Security is very ineffective. It is not insurance, it is redistribution among generations. It is a Ponzi scheme because the risk pool is allocated from one generation to another. And, it is fraught with demographic risk and political risk. It will eventually go under or have to be modified substantially by disavowing the contract between generations because it is not sustainable.

Why is U.S. airline service so lousy?

AA%20gate%20agents.jpegPico Iyer asks an interesting question: Why is service on U.S. airlines so bad compared with that in other U.S. industries? In particular, he asks:

“Why is it, I often wonder, that US carriers have far and away the worst ó most surly, inattentive and often snooty ó service in the world?”

Larry Ribstein figured out the answer to this enigma long ago — creative destruction.

The British have a way of putting things

tesco-ad.jpgCharlie Brooker, writing in The Guardian about the dreadful quality of Christmas season television commercials, nails the line of the day (H/T Tim Worstall) with regard to the latest ad featuring those British icons, the Spice Girls:

Speaking of embarrassments, the Spice Girls have managed to imbue their long-awaited comeback with all the glamour and class of a hurried crap in a service station toilet by whoring themselves out to Tesco. The first instalment, in which the Girl Power quartet try to hide from each other while shopping for presents, represents a important landmark for the performing arts: Posh Spice becomes the first human being in history to be out-acted by a shopping trolley.