Valuing Public News Today

How to properly calculate the cost of public defined-benefit pension benefits, compares the cost of these benefits to private-sector retirement plans, and refutes two of common arguments that public pension benefits are somehow modest.

by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Enthusiasm for public philosophy, and public-facing scholarship more generally, is pervasive. As active contributors to the “public philosophy” genre, we hold that it’s valuable for academics to reach out to broader audiences. It’s good to think deeply about the issues central to living a meaningful life, and this activity shouldn’t be confined to the halls of academia. Yet the practice of public philosophy occasions problems of its own. To star...