•Press Release
May 6, 2019
For Immediate Release: May 6, 2019
Contact: Karen Conner, 202-293-5380 x117, [email protected]
A new analysis in today’s CEPR Blog shows that the future of Social Security is solid with minor adjustments and that there are many ways to “fix” the program without cutting benefits or hurting workers. These changes would even make expanding the program within reach.
A recent Social Security and Medicare trustees’ report predicts the program will be able to pay 77 percent of benefits starting in 2034. However, the trustees also projected a 52.5 percent rise in real wages over the next 30 years, compared to a trust fund shortfall of 2.78 percent of payroll over 75 years.
CEPR’s Adewale Maye and Kevin Cashman write, “Simply put, it is more important to ensure workers are getting a bigger piece of the pie than worrying about whether [Social Security payroll] taxes will rise.”
Funding a program that is vital to so many people can be easily solved by this modest tax increase or by other relatively painless policies. “The difficulty, of course, is not that we don’t know how to solve these problems, it’s that we need to convince politicians to make these changes,” say the authors.
