LMS: the Liebman-MacGuineas-Samwick Non-Partisan Social Security Reform Plan. Above we see Tables 1 & 2 of LMS. Its authors are interesting for a couple of reasons. One they are connected at pretty high policy levels to Administrations past, current, and future. In their own self description from LMS: “The three of us – former aides […]

Cosi made some excellent analysis of the budget implications in the last comment thread, then raised only to drop the issue of motive for privatizers. So I want to try a crack at it here. It is clear to me that most of the people who are pushing privatization are fundamentally opposed to Social Democratic […]

A blast from the past. The first Report I downloaded was the 1997. It didn’t report on Productivity, instead the lead number was Real GDP. So we will run with that. What were the numbers under Intermediate Cost?:1997: 2.5%1998-2006 2.0%2010 1.8%2020 1.3%Hecuva job! A median prediction of a permanent 48% slowdown in growth rate by […]

For today let’s have less meta and more data. The key economic and demographic tables are V.A1 ‘Principal Demographic Assumptions’, V.B1 ‘Principal Economic Assumptions’ and V.B2 ‘Additional Economic Factors’ all of which are available in the 2008 Social Security Report’s List of Tables as are the tables showing numeric outcomes in both inflation adjusted Constant […]

This figure shows in graphic form the outcomes of Intermediate Cost (II) vs High Cost (III) vs Low Cost (I) Outcome II shows the standard narrative. A Trust Fund Ratio rising to a peak in 2017 then a more or less rapid falloff to zero as the first the interest is tapped and then the […]

Well Reader Dan invited me to submit some posts on Social Security and so here I am. Depending on reader interest this is the first in a series trying to get us to a deeper understanding of what Social Security actually is and where it is likely heading. And that may be a much different […]

Hoisted from comments, Bruce Webb writes… The Economic Right as represented by Sowell are getting desperate and as such are petulently lashing out. The key to understanding their thinking is that they don’t see inequality as something to be resisted. In their ideology cream rises to the top while the markets allocate returns on productivity […]