C. Eugene Steuerle has won the 19th annual TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security, in recognition of his 2014 book, Dead Men Ruling: How to Restore Fiscal Freedom and Rescue Our Future.
The Samuelson Award is given each year “in recognition of an outstanding research publication containing ideas that the public and private sectors can use to maintain and improve Americans’ lifelong financial well-being,” a TIAA-CREF release said.
“My thesis is quite simple,” Steuerle writes in the book, which RIJ reviewed in June. “In recent decades, both parties have conspired to create and expand a series of public programs that automatically grow so fast that they claim every dollar of additional tax revenue that the government generates each year.
“They also have conspired to lock in tax cuts that leave the government unable to pay its bills. The resulting squeeze deprives current and future generations of the leeway to choose their own priorities, allocate their own resources, and reach for their own stars. Those generations are left largely to maintain yesterday’s priorities.”
The book, a pointed criticism of the policies of both Republican and Democratic administrations over the past three decades, prescribes a reallocation of resources toward investment in children and financial education, and a workforce strategy that recognizes the talent and potential of older workers.
The award is named after Nobel Prize winner Paul A. Samuelson in honor of his achievements in the field of economics, as well as for his service as a CREF trustee from 1974 to 1985. The Samuelson Award winner is selected by a panel of distinguished judges composed of TIAA-CREF Institute fellows and previous award winners. This year’s panel includes these professors of economics, finance or business:
- James Choi, Yale University
- Eric Johnson, Columbia University
- Brigitte Madrian, Harvard University
- Jonathan Reuter, Boston College
- John Rust, Georgetown University
The TIAA-CREF Institute presented the award in Boston on January 3, 2015, during the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations.
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