Reply #13: I first saw reporting of this in 1994. Please, please please help it get out of the ghetto.

[JHB]

From Left Business Observer #64 (Dec. 1994), by Doug Henwood

Is Social Security really going under?
The eventual bankruptcy of the U.S. Social Security system is taken for granted by nearly everyone, virtually without challenge. In part, that's understandable; who really wants to delve into the annual reports of the system's trustees? But the reports repay study. Of some interest is the news, for example, that the higher the rate of immigration, the sounder the system is, since immigrants (legal or not) tend to be young, and swell the ranks of those paying into the system rather than drawing it down.

Immigration, however, won't make or break the Social Security's finances. GDP growth will, since the size of the economy decades hence will determine how much money is available to pay retirees. The bankruptcy scenario is based on an assumption that GDP will grow at a rate seen only in depression decades.

As is common in the work of official seers, the trustees present three sets of forecasts, an official guess, an optimistic one, and a pessimistic one. The official scenario assumes the economy will grow an average of 1.5% a year over the next 75 years half the rate seen in the last 75 (2.9%), and a rate matched only in one decade of the last century, 1910-20's 1.4% rate. The economy grew more quickly even during the 1930s, 1.9% (1930-40). The growth rate for the trustees' optimistic vision, 2.2%, is only slightly bouncier than the 1930s rate. The pessimistic guess is 0.7%, slower than population growth, and a rate so torpid as to guarantee a war of each against all. As the graph shows, the system will go bust only if you assume decades of stagnation. If the economy grows in line with the 197394 average of 2.4%, still slower than the 75-year average of 2.9%, it will run a big surplus.

Either the trustees are deliberately projecting slow growth to feed the pension-cutting mania, or they're expressing a deep pessimism about the U.S. economy's future. Big news, whichever it is.

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Pensions.html#SS_bust