Growing the Economy for Dummies | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

Growing the Economy for Dummies | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'Chile was the first nation in the Americas to adopt a traditional social security system, way back in 1925 — 10 years before the United States. By the late 1970s, however, the Chilean system was running out of money despite higher and higher taxes. The young labor minister, Jose Pinera, who has a doctorate in economics from Harvard, led a fundamental reform of the system from a government-defined benefit system to a private-account defined-contribution system, which is owned by the workers.

The Chilean system has been so successful during the past 30 years that it has been copied by more than 30 countries, including Sweden and Australia. Chileans retire with far more wealth than the average American, despite the fact that Chile is just a low-middle-income country. In both Chile and the United States, employers are required to set aside a little more than 12 percent for the pension program, but in Chile, someone with the same earnings as an American will be getting $55,000 as an annual pension, while the American, working the same number of years, just gets $18,000.'