Morning Coffee Videocast: The "Ownership Society" Is Not What It's Cracked Up to Be

In which I hog Google's bandwidth, fail to drink my morning coffee, and muse on the implications of the fact that new White House press secretary Tony Snow doesn't have a 401(k) account:

Tony Snow's 401(k): The "Ownership Society" Is Not What It's Cracked Up to Be: Brad DeLong: 2 min 28 sec - May 22, 2006:

Brad DeLong's Morning Coffee. New Bush press secretary Tony Snow doesn't have a 401(k). This is very bad news for Bush's "ownership society." The "ownership society" fails if people don't act responsibly. Yet it seems that even Bush's closest aides are not certain to act responsibly.

Comments

[Hedley Lamarr]

Perhaps Tony Snow is John's son and doesn't need any additonal income over what came from the CSX deal.

[anne]

There are always special success stories in investment, and options in a company stock are almost always especially rewarding to executives, but employee administered retirement plans are highly suspect whether locked to company stock when the lock becomes dangerous or poorly invested in a poor range of mutual funds. Research by David Swensen and John Bogle suggests that investment gains in mutual funds through 25 years of excellent stock, real estate investment trust and bond markets have been remarkably weak. Proper diversification is an issue, but general use of employee managed retirement accounts seems as much a problem.

[Blissex]

«The "ownership society" fails if people don't act responsibly.act responsibly», by making it like that the poor need some kind of guardian to look after their interests. What they need instead is money or time they don't have.

Instead a collective insurance system is better than lots than small accounts not because the poor are irresponsible as a rule, but because it is vastly cheaper and more efficient (but more subject to political whim).

[Auros]

I continue to find that on the occasions when Brad doesn't get his coffee, weird things happen. Last time, it was just that the quality of the presentation suffered -- stuttering, mispronunciations, etc. This time, the Morning Coffee post actually got blasted back in time -- I saw the Mankiw on Krugman on Lieberman post (listed as coming after this one) yesterday, and this Morning Coffee post was not there at the time...