Nobel Prize-Winning Economists

MODERATOR: Our three speakers tonight really need no introduction. Please join me in welcoming three giants of our field, Paul Samuelson, Franco Modigliani, and Bob Solo.

FRANCO MODIGLIANI: The solution consists in creating a so-called funded system. A funded system is one in which the contributions, instead of being used to pay pension, are used to accumulate wealth. And then when you retire, that wealth and not the young people but that wealth, pays your pension.

Now once you've made the change, you can see that this system is far better.

PAUL SAMUELSON: The mathematical economist discovers that these dead weight losses against efficiency and growth progress will increase with the square of the altruistic scale. I'm talking MIT talk.

[LAUGHTER]

I do not deny that any noble cause should be pushed some distance into the law of diminishing returns. But remember, we have only one human nature. It's that which evolved from the Darwinian struggle for existence, and it seems to have left us, all of us, with only a limited endowment of this precious altruism. So altruism, I believe, does need to be rationed carefully, precisely, because of its scarcity.

BOB SOLOW: That bulge, like a pig swallowed by a snake, is sort of creeping through the body politic--

[LAUGHTER]

And--

[LAUGHTER]

Stop there.

[LAUGHTER]

Yes, I do not intend to describe the end of that process.

[LAUGHTER]