Larry Kotlikoff’s Commentaries

Upside Investing represents a revolution in investment/spending strategy. It lets you set a living standard floor that only rises as a result of investing in stocks and other risky assets. The higher your floor, the lower your upside and vice versa.

A new study by Goodman Institute Senior Fellow Laurence Kotlikoff and his colleagues says that middle-aged families in the top fifth of the income distribution have almost 200 times the wealth of families in the bottom fifth.  But after taxes and entitlement transfers, the difference in lifetime spending power is only 7.5 to 1. Our fiscal system is far more progressive than critics like to admit. See the New York Times description and the technical paper.

Americans don’t save enough, either individually or collectively. Yet by looking at the wrong data, many journalists and even top economists are claiming we’re experiencing a “savings glut.” This is hogwash. It’s time to talk turkey about U.S. saving and for journalists and professionals to either do their homework or hold their pens. More

Congress should take this opportunity to make the tax system fully inflation-neutral. But neither inflation nor the Fed’s minor rate hikes will kill the economy. Nor will Putin’s war, which is stimulating the defense industry. Nor will ongoing slowdowns in Chinese production, which is stimulating home production. What can kill the economy is enough people, who should know better, talking it down.

Theft is a strong word. So, take it from Social Security’s own Inspector General (IG), whose 2018 report estimates that Social Security wrongfully deprived over 13,000 widows and widowers of $132 million and counting! More