November 26, 2010
CBS News apparently now considers objectivity old-fashioned as it told viewers:
“As more boomers pack it in, the number of Americans collecting Social Security retirement benefits is projected to nearly double over the next 25 years to more than 76 million. The system won’t be able to handle the strain without an overhaul.”
Well, no that is not true. The projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that the system can pay all benefits through the year 2039 with no changes whatsoever. The Social Security trustees are somewhat more pessimistic showing that full benefits can be paid through the year 2037 with no changes at all. By 2039 the oldest baby boomers will be age 93 and the youngest will be 74. By 2037, the oldest boomers will be 91 and the youngest 73.
This means that by both the CBO and the trustees projections, most of the retirement of the baby boomers can be supported with no change whatsoever. Furthermore, even after this date, the program would still be able to pay close to 80 percent of scheduled benefits, assuming no changes are ever made. This makes the use of the term “overhaul” somewhat dubious. If a change of the sort put in place by the Greenspan commission back in 1983 was implemented in 2030, it would make the program fully solvent through the rest of the century.
The country did not begin to prepare for the 1983 changes in 1963. There is no obvious reason that the country need to act now to change Social Security, even if CBS News apparently wants us to.
It is unfortunate that CBS chose to advocate its position on Social Security rather than inform the public. Since many people are under the impression that they will receive no Social Security benefit, it would have been helpful if CBS had pointed out this is not possible unless Congress votes to end the program.
It would have also been helpful if CBS noted that every official projection shows that workers will on average be far richer in 30 or 40 years than they are today. Groups like the Peter G. Peterson Foundation have spent vast sums of money trying to convince the public that workers on average are getting poorer through time. While many workers have gotten poorer, this is the result of the upward redistribution within generations to rich people like Peter G. Peterson (a successful investment banker). It is certainly possible that the continued upward redistribution of income will leave most workers poorer in the future than they are today, but this will be a question of intra-generational inequality, not inter-generational inequality.
Comments