Express Yourself!

<p><a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17771">Paul Krugman's article</a>, <em>America's Senior Moment</em>, in the New York Review of Books clarifies some important misconceptions concerning Social Security.  One important issue to keep in mind is that current Social Security receipts fund current retirees.  If you divert any to private accounts, you will feel the pinch immediately.  So, privatizing is the surest way to kill Social Security.  An interesting misconception that privatizers like to float is that historically 16 earners supported 1 retiree, and during the projected crises 2 earners will support each retiree.  Although this fact is true, Social Security was able to run a surplus with 3 earners for every retired person, since the 1970's.</p><p /><p>Apparently <a href="http://www.thinkingpeace.com/pages/arts2/arts343.html">Roger Lowenstein</a> caught Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute doing a little fuzzy math with Social Security projections.  Whenever Social Security runs a surplus those figures become part of the federal budget and disappear.  Yet, whenever the system runs a deficit these figures are retained for justifying the crises.</p><p>If economic conditions exist to supprt private accounts profitably, then Social Security will remaim solvent.  Bush, keep your hands out of the cookie jar!</p>

This entry was posted on February 21, 2005 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Social Security Watch . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.