Looks like professional wonks, some liberal some centrist and soft on privatization.
> . . .
> I would appreciate any help on the provenance of this
> report. For one thing, it contains a table showing
> Social Security expenditures as 15.2% of GDP. This is
> incredibly high. The Trustees Report gives 4.6% of
> GDP.
I couldn't find the table. SS expenditures for Fiscal Year 1997 were $362 billion, so the 4.6 figure is the right one. The other one is within shouting distance of SS as a share of total U.S. public spending (Federal, state and local), though it still looks to be off a bit. It's definitely too big to be % of Federal spending.
> The table footnotes say that the 15.2% figure is obtained
> from the International Labour Organization.
This adds to the suspicion that the base is total public spending. For international comparisons, all the international org's have to message the national numbers for compatibility. Also, they don't compare the central governments only but typically merge the entire public sector. Otherwise you would get misleading contrasts between countries with different degrees of centralized government.
> Isn't the ILO a capitalist front?
Only if you're a deluded trot.
> And what do you all think of the Urban Institute?
Lots of very useful work, all free except for the books on their web sites.
> I suspect that the "report" is tendentious and unusable,
> but I would like the opinion of lbotists.
Might be tendentious but all serious students of the debate would be well-advised to keep abreast of the material.
Cheers,
max