by Bruce Webb As Krugman would say: Wonkish. Last Wednesday I put up a post Vanishing the Social Security Surplus which got some push back in comments by Andrew Biggs. So let me back up a little. Social Security surplus is defined in two ways. One is ‘Income less Interest – Cost’. The other is […]

by Bruce Webb Well the Republican Party and economic conservatives generally have made their position clear, they are openly using the current meltdown as an opportunity to kill Medicare and Social Security as they exist today. We saw this at the Stimulus Summit where the very first question by the Republicans, coming from Senate Minority […]

by Bruce Webb A new front was opened Monday in the war on Social Security. The first shot came from Kevin Hassett of AEI who wrote a piece for Bloomberg Recession Bites Into Social Security’s Surplus We have all been so busy whining about bonuses at American International Group Inc. and arguing about the so-called […]

by Bruce Webb What special holiday falls on March 31st? Yep is is Social Security Report Release Day. Now as I type it turns out that the Social Security Bunny (aka Commissioner Michael Astrue) has not actually delivered his special SS Egg, and gosh who knows, given that we are still in transition from the […]

by Bruce Webb Social Security is typically discussed in static terms, that is it ‘will’ or ‘is projected’ to get to this state or that at some fixed point in the future. This I think is an artifact of ‘crisis’ being seen as the result of a known fixed event, namely Boomer Retirement. And it […]

by Bruce Webb Barkley Rosser and I among others have long claimed that Social Security’s economic models are too pessimistic in light of performance both over the whole post-war period and particularly over the last dozen years. And the numbers looking back are pretty clear, Social Security income/cost ratios have come in better than Intermediate […]

h/t Movie Guy CBO Preliminary Analysis (PDF) For your reading and commenting pleasure. I would only note that much of the change between the CBO January baseline and today is just the result of scoring the intervening legislation and not due to any unexpected economic changes. But in any case here it is. Update: here […]

by Bruce Webb Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. The otherwise estimable Ezra falls into the trap.Bipartisan Policy Making Hertzberg is wrong at so many levels and so many points that you hardly know where to start. I have bolded some of the really wrong-headed claims. Rick Hertzberg notices some Republicans calling […]

by Bruce Webb In a post at his site Andrew Biggs points us to a NewMajority.com piece by him Survey: Half of workers would opt out of Social Security if they could which in turn points to a survey sponsored by Sun Life Financial Results show that almost half (48%) would prefer to stop paying […]

by Bruce Webb 1997 II.F62007 II.D7Each year the Trustees of Social Security provide a graphic representation of the results of the three alternative projections: Low Cost, Intermediate Cost, and High Cost represented by results I, II, III respectively. And the overall shape of the graph didn’t vary much from 1997 to 2007 (other selected years […]