The above table is from the National Academy of Social Insurance’s (NASI) Social Security Brief: Social Security Finances: Findings of the 2009 Trustees Report, a valuable summary from a group broadly supportive of traditional Social Security. If Social Security really was in a serious crisis you would expect the right hand column to show steady […]

by Bruce Webb 2007 Report Table IV.B72008 Report Table IV.B7 2009 Report Table IV.B7There are some prominent commentators on Social Security who insist that its future Unfunded Liabilities are in large part the result of over-generosity to past participants, and particularly those who drew benefits from the program in the early years without fully contributing. […]

As always, click on image to enlarge.People who claim that ‘there is no Trust Fund’ never explain how this works in practice. In reality the two Social Security Trust Funds have portfolios of securities with stated maturities and rates. As these become due each year they are rolled over into new securities in whole or […]

The 2009 Report of the Trustees of Social Security released at 3 PM East Cost Time. File names have been updated and should work. If for some reason they are different you should be able to access the PDF and HTML versions or order the paper version at Reports from the Board of Trustees Entry […]

by Bruce Webb & Coberly (Update: links to Google versions of spreadsheets added. .xls versions available by request)The Northwest Plan is put forth here as a replacement for the plan of Nothing The Cost of Inactivity: ‘Nothing’ as a Plan for Social Security. Not that there is anything wrong with Nothing, we did nothing between […]

by Bruce Webb; plan details and numbers by Coberly and Arne The Northwest Plan takes as a starting point by answering the question raised in A Time for Clarity by coming down clearly on the side of the beneficiary. Which among other things means accepting that the current Trust Fund is an asset and not […]

by Bruce Webb Over the next couple of days I’ll be rolling out what I am tentatively calling the Northwest Plan for Fixing Social Security, ‘Northwest’ because the three current contributers happen to live in the Pacific Northwest. But before doing so I want to lay out some of the conceptual differences underlying various discussions […]

by Bruce Webb The 2009 Report of the Trustees of Social Security will be released late in the afternoon on Tuesday the 12th. Reports from all years are available starting from this page Reports from the Board of Trustees or you can view the HTML, download the PDF, or order a paper copy of the […]

by Bruce Webb These figures show graphically what the recession has done to Social Security’s medium term outlook. Answer? Not much.. A near term dip in income is never fully recovered in dollar terms. A DI ‘Primary Surplus’ heading for zero got there a little faster. Does any of this add up to rushing to […]

by Bruce Webb I just went on a web cruise through the bigger venues of the left blogosphere and I don’t think even some of the big guys get it. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that 60 is not a particularly important number because it only takes one Blue Dog to defect to sustain […]