Intellectual Capital

Columnist like Maureen Dowd of the New York Times have made great sport of painting president-elect George W. Bush and his family as gang of elitist aristocrats.

This past spring, the Nasdaq stock exchange took a precipitous 1,700-point drop. The Dow Jones Industrial Average took a similar drop earlier in 2000.

Thomas Hardy once wrote that "some folk want their luck buttered." He was ages ahead of his time; his words now describe the Internet entrepreneurs who continue to feast on personal data snatched from Web users -- all in the midst of consumer outcries over Internet privacy and increasing government scrutiny of the gathering of corporate data.

Among the many realities obscured during the 2000 presidential campaign is the fact that reforming Social Security is only one part of a much larger and more serious challenge. However we make the 65-year-old Social Security program solvent for the 21st century, the nation's real retirement security crisis is that during the best of times a majority of American workers have no retirement savings other than Social Security.

This week Vice President Al Gore detailed an approach to retirement saving policy that is radically different from the Social Security privatization plan embraced by his rival, presumptive GOP presidential candidate, Gov. George W. Bush.

Pity the rich. Imagine slaving away your whole life and then, after piling up $10 billion or $20 billion, or even $10 million or $20 million, you die and a bunch of government "grave robbers" come along and impose the "immoral" estate tax on your otherwise lucky heirs. This is the world according to Rep. Dick Armey, the GOP House majority leader and cosponsor of the somewhat morbidly titled "Death Tax Elimination Act."

Although the year is only half over, it seems increasingly likely that the biggest business story of the year will be the court decision to split Microsoft into two separate companies in order to promote competition. If it stands up on appeal, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's decision will take its place with past landmark antitrust decisions to break-up Standard Oil and AT&T.

After a long, public debate, the House of Representatives took the first step toward granting China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status earlier this week. By a 237-197 margin, the House approved PNTR on May 24; the Senate is expected to do the same next month.

As presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore square off over the future of Social Security, they ignore a larger problem. A majority of Americans are not saving nearly enough to maintain their living standards in retirement. This saving gap is widening, in part, because U.S. companies are radically retooling their private pension plans -- covering fewer workers, making pensions less generous and in many cases cutting the benefits promised to older workers.

Although unforeseen bumps in the road may be ahead, there seems to be a good chance that both China and Taiwan will become members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) this year. This will not be the first international organization to which both China and Taiwan belong, but it could be the most important in terms of facilitating the economic development of Taipei and Beijing and in creating a basis for a peaceful resolution of their longstanding conflict.