John Goodman’s Commentaries

To avert financial disaster for our children and grandchildren we need to reform these elderly entitlement programs. Yet reform efforts are easily demagogued by opponents unless they contain real benefits for the current generation of retirees. More.

Under current law we have already promised current and future retirees unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits amounting to $163 trillion in current dollars. That is almost seven times the size of our economy. And of course, all this is “off the table.”  More

When John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, he won the majority of white voters who didn’t have a college degree. But he lost white college graduates by a two-to-one margin. The numbers were almost exactly reversed for Joe Biden.

The committee chair will be Bernie Sanders and Bill Cassidy will be the ranking member. Ironically, both believe in universal coverage that could be achieved with no increase in health care spending. Sanders will need help from Cassidy if anything is to be done in a closely divided Senate. The problem: their visions for health care are so different, there is almost no overlap. More.

Before the election, the House Republican Study Committee released a document that was chock full of commendable reforms. But no one read it. More.

Republican politicians and right-of-center thinkers have given us the most progressive tax and transfer system in the world. Here are a few more examples of progressive ideas from the right. More.

The words “progressive” and “Democrat” have become virtually synonymous in modern parlance. But did you know that the most important progressive reform ideas of the last half-century have not come from the left? They have come from Republican politicians and right-of-center intellectuals and think tanks. More.