Is there really a Social Security crisis?
Some people say Social Security’s financing problems are just a function of pessimistic economic projections. If the economy grows faster, they say, Social Security won’t go broke. And so they then ask, “Why make big changes now for a problem that may never occur?” Unfortunately, that view is wrong. Two independent panels of experts examined the trustees’ projections of how our workforce and economy will grow. The panels found the trustees’ estimates to be reasonable or maybe even a little optimistic regarding the future of the Social Security system’s financing. In other words, instead of a “phony crisis,” we might actually have something even worse than expected. Social Security is safe today but will run deficits in just12 years. That’s not a very long time to fix the world’s biggest government program. Moreover, the longer we wait, the worse the problem will become. For every year that we wait, Social Security reform will cost an additional $600 billion.
