Social Security conversation
Good conversation in comments at Think Progress after a post about Pozen rejecting Bush’s private accounts plan.
People keep saying this will happen in 2018 and that will happen in 2041. Let’s remember that the government’s track record at predicting the economy or federal budget even 5 or 10 years out is miserable. The idea that they can predict what will be happening in 2041 is laughable.
Also, note that the prediction everybody talks about assumes lower-than-historical productivity growth and lower-than-historical immigration. I don’t see why productivity growth should slow (my company is innovating and advancing productivity – are the rest of you slacking off?) and I sure don’t see why immigration should slow down – that’s a guess about future politics which is even less certain than economic forecasts.
buckshot, you are simply mistaken when you say “Congress cannot ‘pay back’ the trust fund. Those billions ($1.6 trillion, I believe) are all long gone.” Would you also suggest that Congress cannot pay back the rest of the federal debt? Our market system disagrees with you, because millions of investors, institutions, and foreign banks are right now buying US treasury obligations at low interest rates – rates which show their faith that they will certainly be repaid.
The predicted long-term shortfall between SS taxes and promised SS benefits works out to about 2% of GDP. Bush’s tax cuts were also about 2% of GDP, so reversing them would approximately cover the shortfall. That doesn’t cover the existing debt, but there is no reason that taxes can’t be raised further. That is, no reason other than a lack of votes in Congress and a president to sign on. In any case, to avoid a crisis it is not necessary to pay back all the debt, merely to keep the debt reasonable relative to GDP, so that it can be carried without disrupting the economy.
As a practical matter, the SS trust fund debt will be repaid. No politician of any party is going to vote to default on debt held by the trust fund while continuing to repay debt that is held by Chinese and Japanese banks.
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