Paul Ryan's zombie-eyed love affair is really with the failed economic policies of Milton Friedman. Eventhough Friedman died a while ago, his discredited ideas still eat the brains of Serious People on a regular basis. Paul Ryan recently praised Chile's pension system and most likely has it in mind as a model for your pension, here in the US. If you follow me over the fold, you'll get to read Paul Ryan's praise for the Chilean way in a wikileaked cable and find out which Chicago gangsters Ryan really loves.
Paul Ryan visited Chile in 2008 and seemed well informed about and interested in Chile's controversial pension system and it's reforms
http://cablesearch.org/...
Rep. Ryan noted he was impressed with the Chilean pension system. Perez Yoma replied that the system was still functioning well, despite the global financial breakdown, although pension holdings had dropped dramatically. He had been surprised by the relatively low level of "political criticism" the losses had generated.
So Paul Ryan was visiting Chile while the pension system was being reformed and liked what he saw, with little signs of backlash from the people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The pension system was changed by José Piñera, during Augusto Pinochets military government on November 4, 1980 from a PAYGO-system to a fully funded capitalization system run by private sector pension funds. Many critics and supporters see the reform as an important experiment under real conditions, that may give conclusions about the impact of the full conversion of a PAYGO-system to a capital funded system. The development was therefore internationally observed with great interest. Under Michelle Bachelet's government the Chile Pension system was reformed again.
Under the Bachelet government, the pension system was reformed again in the year 2008. Andrés Velasco, the leading economic adviser to the government, addressed the two main problems as the coverage of the population and the amount of the administrative costs. Too many people are outside the pension system, and capital accumulation by using the pension funds is quite expensive. The reform follows a recommendation by the World Bank, who has found in the 1980 pension system a strong redistributive component at the expenses of low paid or occasionally unemployed workers. A big part of the Chilean population is not able to finance meaningful pensions, because many workers are not able to regularly contribute a higher amount of money. Additionally many workers have difficulties to achieve the 20 years of contributions to at least qualify for minimum pension. Since the pension funds charge high fixed administrative costs per insured person and only a small portion of the administrative costs depend on the amount of the capital account, capital accumulation by pension funds is very unprofitable for workers with lower incomes
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From all the anti-Chicago rhetoric coming from the Romney campaign, I wonder if they will denounce some of the economic gangsterism promoted by these guys -
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
They are based on the theories of Milton Friedman, which this journalist thinks inspires Paul Ryan more than Ayn Rand -
http://www.minnpost.com/...
“One function that Friedman believes is not government’s job is provisions for retirement. He writes: “The citizen of the United States who is compelled by law to devote something like 10 percent of his income to the purchase of a particular kind of retirement contract, administered by the government, is being deprived of a corresponding part of his personal freedom.”
I think Paul Ryan might also want to destroy our pension system in order to save it, but I'm guessing no journalist would ask such an impolite question.