Day 4 SSD blogathon: SS is not going broke by 2033, stop saying it Dems [View all]

Last edited Thu Apr 4, 2013, 10:30 PM - Edit history (2)

Each year the Social Security Trustees issue a report that contains 4 scenarios, Intermediate Cost, High Cost, Low Cost, and a Stochastic Model. In 1998 Economist Dean Baker wrote an article entitled Nine Misconceptions About Social Security. In the article Dean writes:

Social Security projections are based on extremely pessimistic economic assumptions: that growth will average just 1.8 percent over the next twenty years, a lower rate than in any comparable period in U.S. history; that growth will slow even further in later years, until the rate is less than half the 2.6 percent of the past twenty years; that there will be no increase in immigration even when the economy experiences a labor shortage because of the retirement of the Baby Boom generation; and that this labor shortage will not lead to a rapid growth in wages. Both possibilities excluded in these projections—increased immigration and rapid wage growth—would increase the fund's revenues. These projections are genuinely a worst-case scenario.

When discussing the projections of the SS Trustees one should understand that the Office of the Chief Actuary publishes the SS Trustees report, runs and directs "a program of actuarial estimates and analyses relating to SSA-administered retirement, survivors and disability insurance programs and to proposed changes in those programs".

Actuaries have a responsibility to provide "conservative statutory accounting reporting provides a reasonable level of assurance that an insurer’s resources are adequate to meet its policyholder obligations at all times", according to the US Insurance Financial Solvency Core Principle 4, of theNational Association of Insurance Commissioners.

6 Political Appointees are the SS Trustees: Executive Summary is a political document.

The Political appointees are the ones who issue the Executive Summary, they have little to do with the actual Actuaries and Economists who assemble the projections, charts and tables. The Executive Summary is a purely political document, and that's all the average person hears about. The Social Security Trust Fund will be depleted by 2030 and can only pay 76% of benefits. OMG the sky will fall in 2033 ! ! !

Hey you with the sourpuss face, this party is just getting started ! !



More:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/03/28/1197514/-Day-4-SSD-blogathon-SS-is-not-going-broke-by-2033-stop-saying-it-Dems

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Thank You DU