October 28, 2010
It sure wouldn’t be obvious that the cost of Social Security is one of the biggest problems facing the country. The program’s projected shortfall over the next 75 years is equal to 0.5 percent of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This is less than one fourth of the increase in defense spending over the last decade. The share of health care spending in GDP is projected to rise by more than this every 3 years.
Dealing with global warming, a rapidly growing population of current and former prisoners, educating our children and maintaining our infrastructure all seem to pose much larger challenges than meeting the projected funding shortfall in Social Security. It is not clear why the NYT is telling readers that the growing costs of paying Social Security benefits are “one of the government’s biggest long-term challenges.” The data do not appear to support this assertion.
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