February 24, 2012
Fortune’s Allan Sloan wrote in a recent column about Social Security’s projected $300 billion shortfall and the need for reform. But as Dean Baker wrote on Beat the Press yesterday, there are technical issues with Sloan’s analysis as well as one substantive issue: “[T]he first, second, and third priority of policymakers should be job creation.” As we’ve said time and time again here at CEPR, the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that Social Security will be able to pay full benefits through the year 2038 and will be able to pay almost 80 percent of full benefits for decades afterwards. To quote Dean: “Relax.”