Government And Business

The Debt Dialogues [Episode 47]: R.J. Renza, Jr., on Social Security

The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview R.J. Renza, Jr., author of How Are You Not Angry Yet? How Social Security is Destroying the Futures, Finances and Hopes of Generations X, Y and Z and How We Can Put an End To It, on the vital need to end Social Security. Topics covered include: the true cost of Social Security, what young people really think about the program and how to convince people that Social Security should be abolished.
Government And Business

The Debt Dialogues [Episode 43]: Peter Ferrara on Entitlement Reform

The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Peter Ferrara, senior fellow for entitlement and budget policy at The Heartland Institute, on how to address the entitlement crisis. Topics include: why Social Security and Medicare are not sustainable; the importance of coming up with concrete proposals for reining in entitlements; Peter Ferrera’s proposals for reforming Social Security and the health care system.
Government And Business

Why Don’t Americans Have More Saved For Retirement?

Eduardo Porter has a piece in The New York Times blaming Wall Street for the fact that the average American is allegedly going to run out of money in retirement. According to Porter, the average working family nearing retirement has just $104,000 in retirement savings — obviously not enough to keep someone afloat for twenty or thirty years. I’m not convinced that we are in fact facing a “retirement crisis.” But I want to set that aside. What’s interesting is who Porter blames for this problem.
Government And Business

End the Debt Draft: How the Welfare State Is Exploiting Millennials [Video]

If nothing is done, the bill for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will bankrupt Millennials and their children. But support for these programs is strong among the elderly and the young alike. In this talk delivered as part of ARI’s Road to a Free Society tour, best-selling author Don Watkins argues that this support is based on a handful of myths, and that if Americans knew the truth about the welfare state, they would not want to save it — but abolish it.
ARI News

Recent Media Highlights

Ayn Rand Institute experts appear frequently in various media outlets, addressing everything from the state of the nation to the state of the culture.

Further Reading

Ayn Rand | 1957
For the New Intellectual

The Moral Meaning of Capitalism

An industrialist who works for nothing but his own profit guiltlessly proclaims his refusal to be sacrificed for the “public good.”
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Ayn Rand | 1961
The Virtue of Selfishness

The Objectivist Ethics

What is morality? Why does man need it? — and how the answers to these questions give rise to an ethics of rational self-interest.
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