Lies, damn lies and statistics

[GG]

I know a few people are upset that the Bush administration is lying about the Social Security crisis. Some people don't like the word crisis, they would prefer to call it a challenge, because it's not an issue they will face in their lifetime.

 

But, if people are accusing Bush of preying upon people's fears, why won't they just answer the questions.

 

Compliments to Tim Russert on yet another job, well done.

 

Meet The Press - January 16, 2005

 

Some excerpts for the reading challenged:

 

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Social Security and put a quote up on the board.

 

"...the looming fiscal crisis in Social Security. ...If nothing is done by 2029, there will be a deficit in Social Security trust fund, which will either require...a huge tax increase in the payroll tax, or just about a 25 percent cut in Social Security benefits."

 

Do you agree with that?

 

REP. EMANUEL: What I believe--let's talk about Social Security in complex and all that we have to do. Democrats believe in individual retirement plans as a supplement to Social Security. Republicans believe in individual retirement plans as a way to supplant Social Security. Fundamental difference.

 

MR. RUSSERT: But do you believe there is a looming fiscal crisis in Social Security?

 

REP. EMANUEL: Looming--I think the crisis--if you want to use the word "crisis"--that we have today, it applies to the fact that people do not have retirement plans on top of Social Security. .....

 

MR. RUSSERT: But I'm going to bring you back to that quote. Do you agree that if we do nothing, we'll have to either raise taxes or cut benefits?

 

REP. EMANUEL: Well, no. I think first of all, we're ready to do something on Social Security. But I want to say this. What we can't do, Tim, what we can't do is take the guaranteed retirement benefit for seniors and replace it with a guaranteed fee for Wall Street. As my grandmother would have said, "Such a deal." What the president's talk...

 

MR. RUSSERT: But the question--what that quote said...

 

REP. EMANUEL: Who's that quote--the quote is from?

 

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you.

 

REP. EMANUEL: No. Who's it from I asked.

 

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you.

 

REP. EMANUEL: OK.

 

MR. RUSSERT: William Jefferson Clinton.

 

REP. EMANUEL: Right.

 

MR. RUSSERT: "There is a looming fiscal crisis. We either have to cut benefits or raise taxes."

 

Do you agree with your former employer?

 

REP. EMANUEL: Well, since you want to bring up President Clinton, my former employer balanced the budget, worked with Democrats and Republicans to do that, had an economy that was growing by 2 1/2 percent to 3 percent. He also created for three years in a row a surplus. ......

 

 

MR. RUSSERT: But let's go back to the issue of Social Security. Here's something else that President Clinton said after he was elected. He was asked by The Wall Street Journal, "Let's run a couple [of deficit cutting measures] by you just to see if you would entertain them: raising the retirement age for Social Security benefits?" "I think it's something we ought to look at, I sure do. ...Now, with the fastest growing group of the population over 80, by the turn of the century the average person could literally spend 20 years in retirement. I think it is something that definitely has to be looked at."

 

REP. EMANUEL: Yeah.

 

MR. RUSSERT: Do you agree?

 

REP. EMANUEL: I'm not going to negotiate and talk about the points here. .......

 

 

..... And I do not believe if you want to say the word "crisis," we have one when it comes to people saving for their retirement. Social Security has a challenge. We're ready to work and meet on that. But we will not participate in scaring people to accomplish some ideological or political objective.

 

MR. RUSSERT: All right.

 

REP. EMANUEL: We're going to strengthen Social Security by meeting that challenge.

 

MR. RUSSERT: We know that President Clinton said it was a looming crisis that either had to cut benefits or raise taxes. George Bush is saying the same thing. George Bush is proposing an alternative of private accounts in part, and the rest of the plan we're not sure of. We do know that the number of people on Social Security is going to double in the next 20 years.

 

REP. EMANUEL: Right.

 

MR. RUSSERT: We do know that life expectancy has gone from 65 to 80, so that 80 million people will be on Social Security for 15 to 20 years. Will the Democrats come forward with a specific plan to save Social Security and what will it encompass?

 

REP. EMANUEL: Yeah. What the Democrats will do is we stand ready to work on the retirement security. I've laid out here just briefly some of the things we are going to deal with helping people establish a retirement plan for themselves in addition to Social Security.

 

MR. RUSSERT: No, but specifics.

 

REP. EMANUEL: All right.

 

MR. RUSSERT: Let me go through a checklist.

 

REP. EMANUEL: All right.

 

MR. RUSSERT: Would you consider raising the retirement age?

 

REP. EMANUEL: Tim, I'm not going to sit here and negotiate it. To quote...

 

MR. RUSSERT: But why won't the Democrats or the Republicans level with the American people?

 

REP. EMANUEL: Well, no, we will. Well, first of all, Tim, you talk about leveling with the American people, as you just said, Social Security right now is--in 2042 we face the challenge. He wants to use the word crisis.

 

I think when 80 percent of the workers who work at small businesses have no retirement plan, that to me has an immediacy that uses the word "crisis." When literally nearly 40 percent of the households, 27 million households, have no retirement plan outside of Social Security, that has an immediacy to me. We stand ready to work on that. On the notion of Social Security, on the notion that when you blow all the smoke away, we're talking about raising--borrowing another $2 trillion, cutting benefits up to 40 percent...

 

MR. RUSSERT: What is your alternative?

 

REP. EMANUEL: Well, the alternative, as you well know, is we work here, we have an alternative as it relates to retirement plans and helping people develop retirement plans on top of Social Security. I will not tell you what we don't do, and as you know on this show, Tim, and you're smart to what happens in this town, the president proposes and Congress disposes, he'll come forward with his plan. We'll work from there. We stand ready to help strengthen people's retirement security...

 

MR. RUSSERT: Is this a lesson that you've learned from Mrs. Clinton's health-care plan, where she proposed a plan, the Democrats did not propose any viable alternative, they just sat back and watched that sink? Is that your plan for the president's Social Security plan?

 

Priceless.

[Alaska Darin]

I can't wait to hear the response of our resident Reagan "Republican."

[DC Tom]

"Democrats believe in individual retirement plans as a supplement to Social Security. I think the crisis that we have today, it applies to the fact that people do not have retirement plans on top of Social Security..."

 

So let me see if I have Mr. Emanuel's position clear...Social Security is intended to provide people a means to retire not requiring individual retirement plans...but the problem with Social Security is that too many people intend for it to provide a means to retire not requiring individual retirement plans.

 

Or, in short: the biggest problem with Social Security is that he (even though he said "Democrats", I'll be more than fair and assume that the majority of Democrats are laughing at this twit) wants it to do something that he admits it's fundamentally incapable of doing.

 

Nice friggin' reasoning there.

[Guest RabidBillsFanVT]

Well, the alternative, as you well know, is we work here, we have an alternative as it relates to retirement plans and helping people develop retirement plans on top of Social Security. I will not tell you what we don't do, and as you know on this show, Tim, and you're smart to what happens in this town, the president proposes and Congress disposes, he'll come forward with his plan. We'll work from there. We stand ready to help strengthen people's retirement security...

 

Let me get this straight... you HAVE an alternative that you won't talk about, instead going in circles....

 

You won't tell what you won't do OR do...

 

You are ***strengthening*** people's retirement security while the system will be massively in debt??

 

What a loony. This excerpt truly is an embarassment... people elect this guy???

 

[KD in CA]

Let me get this straight... you HAVE an alternative that you won't talk about, instead going in circles....

 

 

 

Sounds like the Kerry campaign.

[GG]

Let me get this straight... you HAVE an alternative that you won't talk about, instead going in circles....

 

You won't tell what you won't do OR do...

 

You are ***strengthening*** people's retirement security while the system will be massively in debt??

 

What a loony. This excerpt truly is an embarassment... people elect this guy???

 

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You're catching on

[Guest RabidBillsFanVT]

Sounds like the Kerry campaign. 

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What's worse; going in a circle, or going one path down the road to ruin?

 

I like the former.

[Guest RabidBillsFanVT]

You're catching on

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Well it doesn't take much to read and observe question-dodging... it happens SO much on television, that I often yell at the TV, "Just answer the QUESTION!!" hehe Party is of no consequence in that regard....

[Losman-McGahee-Evans]

Time Magazine: Crisis is "just not true"

 

Time Magazine headlines:

 

Taking on Social Security

Social Security is a long way from bankrupt, despite the President's assertions. Why, then, is Bush taking on America's biggest, most successful social program ever?

 

Good question.

 

TIME's latest poll gives some indication of what Bush faces: 49% of respondents said they disapprove of the President's handling of Social Security, while only 40% said they approve. And that's before Bush has even put forward the details of his plan. Nonetheless, the President has begun his assault—personally and through a cadre of emissaries from Vice President Dick Cheney to Treasury Secretary John Snow—labeling Social Security a "crisis" that must be fixed. "First step," Bush told TIME last month, "is to make sure everybody understands we have a problem." The President last week surrounded himself with citizens ranging from children to an 80-year-old and warned that the Social Security system will be "flat bust, bankrupt" by the time workers in their 20s retire. As early as 2018, Bush said, "you're either going to have to raise the taxes of people or reduce the benefits." At another appearance intended to promote federal standards for testing high school students, Bush went off script to warn a group of teenagers, "The system will be bankrupt by the year 2040."

 

That sounds pretty scary—except that it's not true. What will actually happen in 2018, according to the Social Security trustees who oversee the program, is that the money paid out in benefits will begin to exceed the amount collected in taxes. And since Social Security will run a surplus until then (and has been running one for some time), it has billions available that it can tap to fill the gap. Even under conservative estimates, the system as it stands will have enough money to pay all its promised benefits until 2042 and most of its obligations for decades after.

 

I quote, "It's just not true."

 

NYT Sunday Magazine: Social Security is "not in crisis"

 

 

Roger Lowenstein in the NYT Sunday Magazine where he points out Social Security, "appears to be solvent or near solvent until the limit of what is humanly forecastable".

 

The campaign is potentially self-fulfilling: persuade enough people that Social Security is going bankrupt, and it will lose public support. Then Congress will be forced to act. And thanks to such unceasing alarums, many, and perhaps most, people today think the program is in serious financial trouble.

 

But is it? After Bush's re-election, I carefully read the 225-page annual report of the Social Security trustees. I also talked to actuaries and economists, inside and outside the agency, who are expert in the peculiar science of long-term Social Security forecasting. The actuarial view is that the system is probably in need of a small adjustment of the sort that Congress has approved in the past. But there is a strong argument, which the agency acknowledges as a possibility, that the system is solvent as is.

 

Although prudence argues for making a fix sooner rather than later, the program is not in crisis, nor is its potential shortfall irresolvable. Ideology aside, the scale of the fixes would not require Social Security to abandon the role that was conceived for it in 1935, and that it still performs today -- as an insurance fail-safe for the aged and others and as a complement to people's private market savings.

 

There is no crisis

 

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, writes:

 

President Bush has been working hard to promote belief in a Social Security crisis. Unfortunately for him, the numbers refuse to cooperate. The latest numbers from the Social Security trustees show that the program can pay all scheduled benefits through the year 2042 with no changes whatsoever.

 

An independent assessment from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows that the program can pay all benefits through the year 2052. Even after these dates, the projections from both the trustees and CBO show that the program will always be able to pay a higher benefit than that received by current retirees, although not the full scheduled benefit.

 

Standing together, we have kept Social Security a friend to all Americans for 70 years. Social Security is our friend and we need to watch out for Social Security as Social Security has watched out for us. We have every reason to be confident about the future of Social Security, which is healthy and successful.

 

BUSINESSWEEK: Social Security Crisis? What Crisis?

 

Laura D'Andrea Tyson (Dean of London Business School):

 

Is the Social Security system facing a crisis? President George W. Bush certainly wants us to think so. Indeed, he recently warned that the "crisis is now." After years of repeated warnings by conservative political thinkers, the word crisis has become the mental frame that shapes the way many Americans think about Social Security's future.

 

This lie is the true crisis because the fake "crisis" is being exploited to gut Social Security.

 

To defuse the crisis hype it is useful to begin with a few facts. First, Social Security is a significant source of income for elderly Americans, providing the majority of income for two-thirds of elderly beneficiaries and all of the income for 20% of them. Second, according to the most recent report by the Trustees of Social Security, even under the cautious assumption that the U.S. economy grows at the anemic rate of 1.6% a year, the revenues into Social Security from the current level of payroll taxes will cover promised benefits for another 38 years and will be enough to finance about 70% of benefits through 2078.

 

 

ROLLING STONE: The Fake Crisis

 

Eric Bates under the headline, The Fake Crisis:

 

To hear George Bush tell it, Social Security is about to go broke. Since his re-election, the president has launched a full-scale campaign to convince the public that the retirement system will run out of money starting in 2018. "The system goes into the red," Bush told reporters on December 20th at a rare press conference. "Many times, legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them. I believe that crisis is." Social Security, he concluded, "can't sustain that which has been promised to the workers."

 

To save Social Security, Bush wants to destroy it -- replacing government-guaranteed retirement benefits with private accounts that will be subject to the whims of the stock market.

 

A "fake crisis" to "destroy" Social Security?

 

Merc: Social Security is not in a Crisis

 

Steven Thomma, reporting for the San Jose Mercery News:

 

Social Security is not in a crisis. Full checks will keep going out for decades, even without changes.

The only crisis is a manufactured crisis by the White House.

 

Bush is leading the drumbeat, starting this week with a series of speeches and staged events and building to a prime spot in his upcoming State of the Union Speech. "The crisis is now," he said recently.

 

Yet the facts show no imminent threat to Social Security.

 

Even without a single change, the checks will continue to go out as scheduled at least until 2042, perhaps 2052. Even then, the system could afford to pay 73 percent of benefits. Under one of three projections envisioned by the trustees who run the program, it could even afford to keep paying full benefits and start amassing a big surplus.

 

Instead a shortage in 50 years, there could be a huge surplus?

 

Why are Bush's goals 'crises'?

 

 

Great Washington Post Article:

 

Warning of the need for urgent action on his Social Security plan, Bush says the "crisis is now" for a system even the most pessimistic observers say will take in more in taxes than it pays out in benefits well into the next decade.

So there is no crisis...unless Bush manufactures a crisis:

 

In a Dec. 20 news conference, the president explained. "Many times, legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them," Bush said, discussing Social Security. "And so for a period of time, we're going to have to explain to members of Congress that crisis is here."

Public Doesn't See a Crisis

 

ABC News Poll (PDF):

 

CRISIS? – As noted, the administration also faces a challenge in simply getting the public to share its sense of urgency about Social Security. Bush declared last week, “The crisis is now.” In this poll, however, just 25 percent say Social Security is in crisis, actually down from 34 percent in an ABC/Post poll in 1998.

 

===

 

Not sure why this Democrat's answer is your justification for lying to peope in order to push the largest debt accumulation onto the backs of future generations but it's sad to say the least. SS is a tax that prevent the elederly from living in poverty and destroying SS adds to the deficit more than just leaving it as is.

 

As a REAL Republican and a Christian I won't be able to agree with you BS argument to do so because it means massive debt accumulation and lying in order to do it.

[Losman-McGahee-Evans]

I can't wait to hear the response of our resident Reagan "Republican."

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You must consider yourself the funniest 11 year old on your block, huh?

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

Not sure why this Democrat's answer is your justification for lying to peope in order to push the largest debt accumulation onto the backs of future generations but it's sad to say the least.  SS is a tax that prevent the elederly from living in poverty and destroying SS adds to the deficit more than just leaving it as is.

 

As a REAL Republican and a Christian I won't be able to agree with you BS argument to do so because it means massive debt accumulation and lying in order to do it.

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1) Suprisingly, BILL CLINTON was the first to use the term "crisis" WRT Social Security.

 

2) I fail to see how allowing people to manage the money that is placed into their Social Security accounts will be the root cause for "LYING" and "MASSIVE DEBT ACCUMULATION". Please explain your "logic" behind that statement.

[KRC]

1) Suprisingly, BILL CLINTON was the first to use the term "crisis" WRT Social Security.

 

2) I fail to see how allowing people to manage the money that is placed into their Social Security accounts will be the root cause for "LYING" and "MASSIVE DEBT ACCUMULATION". Please explain your "logic" behind that statement.

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You have to remember that a Republican is in charge. Things change. It is not a crisis now. Just leave the problem for our kids to clean up. Forget the fact that the program is doomed to fail, and will need overhauling at some point. It was a crisis up until about 5 years ago, then it all of a sudden went out of crisis mode. Don't worry, it will go back into crisis mode for the next election when the pandering to the AARP starts.

 

Nothing to see here...move along...

[Alaska Darin]

You must consider yourself the funniest 11 year old on your block, huh? 

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As opposed to having the mentality of an 11 year old who believes the financial experts at "Time" magazine?

 

But thanks for using an article that cites polling data. Nothing better than surveying a bunch of people about government finance who can't find Iowa on a map and half of which likely have AT LEAST 5 digit credit card debt.

[nobody]

Sounds like the Kerry campaign. 

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Hard to move on huh?

[Losman-McGahee-Evans]

You have to remember that a Republican is in charge. Things change. It is not a crisis now. Just leave the problem for our kids to clean up. Forget the fact that the program is doomed to fail, and will need overhauling at some point. It was a crisis up until about 5 years ago, then it all of a sudden went out of crisis mode. Don't worry, it will go back into crisis mode for the next election when the pandering to the AARP starts.

 

Nothing to see here...move along...

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The SS trustees tell us that the trust fund will run out of money in 47 years and after that will only be able to pay 80% of benefits. TODAY, outside of Social Security, the federal government only collects enough taxes to pay for 68% of what it spends. So, in 47 years, Social Security will be in better financial condition than the rest of the government. Where's the crisis?

 

By the way, the first person to say SS was in crisis was Reagan....and he opposed privatizing it.

[GG]

The SS trustees tell us that the trust fund will run out of money in 47 years and after that will only be able to pay 80% of benefits.  TODAY, outside of Social Security, the federal government only collects enough taxes to pay for 68% of what it spends.  So, in 47 years, Social Security will be in better financial condition than the rest of the government.  Where's the crisis?

 

By the way, the first person to say SS was in crisis was Reagan....and he opposed privatizing it.

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When will you get it through your head that a wealth distribution program that will turn into an actuarial negative in 30 years is a crisis? What kind of a retort from Ms D'Andrea Tyson is that the system is solvent, as long as 70% of benefits are paid? Who will volunteer to be in the 30% group that will not receive benefits? How does she square her position with her former boss's comments in 1998?

 

Every bit of information that you have provided shows that SS will go negative well before mid century. How magnanimous of you to play loosey goosey with the future generation's livelihood.

 

Notice that you didn't even address the points of the basic fundamental design of Social Security which funds ongoing benefits through current taxes. (It is not insurance, but as a finance expert, you know that) There is no such thing as a trust fund. There is no such thing as a lockbox. It is a government mandated wealth distribution program which will be in need of benefit cuts or tax increases within 30 years, unless there's reform.

 

Sucks for you that there's a president, who you hate, that would like to take care of the problem before it really gets expensive. Interesting that you think Medicare is in dire straits, but SS if fine and dandy when they're both funded out of the same tax pool.

 

Who gets to decide whether a senior's $1,000 monthly SS check is cut, or she can have a $1,000 cataract procedure? C'mon Mr. Fiscal Responsibility, make the choice, and then try to sell it to the Time Mag pollsters.

 

Why, as a self-styled Republican, every one of your sources is from staunch left wing outlets? Where are all the defenses of SS solvency from Kristol, Gingrich, Whittman, etc? Since you were so kind to provide a WSJ article from 1998, where are the deluge of this week's stories from WSJ talking about Social Security? Wouldn't you admit that WSJ may have a better handle on the national economy than a Time Magazine poll?

[KRC]

The SS trustees tell us that the trust fund will run out of money in 47 years and after that will only be able to pay 80% of benefits.  TODAY, outside of Social Security, the federal government only collects enough taxes to pay for 68% of what it spends.  So, in 47 years, Social Security will be in better financial condition than the rest of the government.  Where's the crisis?

 

By the way, the first person to say SS was in crisis was Reagan....and he opposed privatizing it.

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So, you would rather be reactionary than proactive? Nice. The program is doomed to fail. Why bother fixing it when we can just wait for it to collapse first, then start working on the solution that will take YEARS to impliment and cost a HELL of a lot more than it would now? Here is a thought. Let's try to find a solution now, BEFORE it collapses.

[Losman-McGahee-Evans]

When will you get it through your head that a wealth distribution program that will turn into an actuarial negative in 30 years is a crisis?  What kind of a retort from Ms D'Andrea Tyson is that the system is solvent, as long as 70% of benefits are paid?  Who will volunteer to be in the 30% group that will not receive benefits?  How does she square her position with her former boss's comments in 1998?

 

Every bit of information that you have provided shows that SS will go negative well before mid century.  How magnanimous of you to play loosey goosey with the future generation's livelihood.

 

Notice that you didn't even address the points of the basic fundamental design of Social Security which funds ongoing benefits through current taxes. (It is not insurance, but as a finance expert, you know that)  There is no such thing as a trust fund.  There is no such thing as a lockbox.  It is a government mandated wealth distribution program which will be in need of benefit cuts or tax increases within 30 years, unless there's reform.

 

Sucks for you that there's a president, who you hate, that would like to take care of the problem before it really gets expensive.  Interesting that you think Medicare is in dire straits, but SS if fine and dandy when they're both funded out of the same tax pool. 

 

Who gets to decide whether a senior's $1,000 monthly SS check is cut, or she can have a $1,000 cataract procedure?  C'mon Mr. Fiscal Responsibility, make the choice, and then try to sell it to the Time Mag pollsters.

 

Why, as a self-styled Republican, every one of your sources is from staunch left wing outlets?  Where are all the defenses of SS solvency from Kristol, Gingrich, Whittman, etc?  Since you were so kind to provide a WSJ article from 1998, where are the deluge of this week's stories from WSJ talking about Social Security?  Wouldn't you admit that WSJ may have a better handle on the national economy than a Time Magazine poll?

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And when will you get it through your head that it's a badly, badly flawed plan. From a fiscal point of view it's horrendous. It adds to deficits and federal debt in very large numbers until 2060 and the transition costs of Bush's plan for the first 10 years will be at least $2 trillion, and $4.5 trillion for the second 10 years. The exploding deficit will have an adverse effect on interest rates, an adverse effect on consumption and housing prices, reduce productivity and growth, and crowd out debt capital to the private sector. Markets then of course will begin to lose confidence in fiscal policy (Even more so than today -- look at the sliding of the dollar). The soundness of social security will be worse NOT BETTER. The stock market is hardly a sure bet. You are not making social security more secure by subjecting people's retirement to equity risk. If you look at the Nikkei in Japan you get a sense of what can happen. SS is simply a tax that prevents the elderly living in poverty. Its an insurance agianst that.

 

And once agian it IS NOT IN CRISIS. You keep bringing up Newt Gingrich but he just said in a Bloomberg article --

 

"Even Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives and a supporter of private accounts, says, ``The combination of higher birth rates and more immigration makes the United States the healthiest of developed nations. This is not a crisis.''

 

There are a couple of things you could do to solve the SS problem with out adding TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF DEBT. You could increase the retirement age by one year every two decades. For the next 100 years. Or you could just leave it alone since the projections that putit in "crisis" use an anemic 1.8% growth rate which means the economy would essentially have collapsed. If you think tha'ts happening then this is a debate for another time. The other projection from Bush doesn't use the 75 year standard, it dishonestly projects it to infinity.

 

Plus Americans are having more babies. The trend, combined with an annual inflow of immigrants that is more than the rest of the developed world combined, which undercuts the lie behind President George W. Bush's plan to allow private Social Security accounts: that the current system faces an emergency because of a sharp decline in the size of the future U.S. workforce. This is complete bull sh--.

 

Bush has made demographics the centerpiece of his lie for destroying

the 70-year-old program. The number of working-age people supporting each retiree is set to fall to 2.1 in 2050 from 4.6 this year so Bush argues that the trend requires immediate action.

 

``I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now,''

 

The Social Security Administration says the U.S. system, which in 2003 gave out $470 billion in benefits to about 15 percent of Americans, will go broke by 2042 as the American workforce dwindles using that anemic 1.8% growth rate. But demographics experts say the long-term numbers are by no means as definite as they sound in the current debate. ``When you start getting to people who are yet to be born, then the uncertainty starts mounting,'' said Joshua Goldstein, a professor at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. ``You don't realize you're in a baby boom until it's beginning to end.''

 

The trends in the U.S. are far more favorable than they are in many other countries. The U.S. will have more workers to support retirees than Japan, China or the 25 nations in the European Union. By 2050, Europe's ratio of workers to retirees is set to fall to 0.9 from 3.3 today; Japan's will plunge to 0.3 from 2.3 -- or more than three people over 65 for every working-age person.

 

Driven by the nation's immigrants, the U.S. has the fourth- highest birthrate -- after Turkey, Iceland and Mexico -- among the 30 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of the richest countries. The U.S. is one of six OECD members whose birthrate rose in the last 25 years, and the only one of the six with a fertility level above the line needed to increase population, the United Nations says.

 

The U.S. birthrate is estimated to have increased to 2.11 children per woman in the five-year period ending in 2005 from 1.79 in the five years to 1980, according to the UN. Japan's birthrate is estimated at 1.32 during that period. The European Union's rate was 1.46 in 2002.

 

``I can't think of any developed country that has a state pension system in better shape than the U.S.,'' says Monika Queisser, administrator of the social policy division of the Paris- based OECD. ``Social Security makes relatively generous payments at low cost. It's solvent until the middle of the century, and can be for much longer with some tweaking. And the U.S. has a growing population.''

 

Bush's own efforts to promote immigration should actually solve the program's funding gap. Bush, backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, supports letting at least 8 million illegal immigrants stay in the U.S. if they have a job, in what would be the biggest shakeup of immigration law since 1986.

 

Immigrants accounted for almost half the nation's population growth from 2000 to 2003. Even the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks barely slowed the inflow of people to the U.S. from the record 13.7 million who entered in the 1990s so it's not slowing down at all. This alleged forthcoming crisis will be mild compared to those of other modern countries. From July 2001 to July 2003 the U.S. gained a net 2.6 million people through immigration, according to the Census Bureau. Japan's entire population of foreign nationals is 1.7 million, or 1.3 percent of the population. The U.S. foreign-born population is 33 million, 11 percent of the population. Net immigration to the European Union would have to triple to about 1.4 million people a year to counter the decline in the working-age population, PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLC estimated in a September 2000 report. Immigrants in the short run pay more Social Security taxes than they collect, and they may never collect any. Immigrants also make the population younger and they tend to have higher fertility.

 

Steve Goss, the chief actuary for the Social Security system, says net immigration to the U.S. -- the inflow minus the outflow -- may slow in coming years because some of the people who came during the surge in the 1990s could start to leave. A drop in birthrates in Mexico, the biggest source of immigrants to the U.S., also may reduce immigration, he says. The potential supply of immigrants may not keep up with demand but even then it is only expected to fall from 1.3 million a year to 900,000 by the year 2025.

 

The U.K. took in 116,000 immigrants in 2002, and politicians from both the ruling Labour and the opposition Conservative parties have proposed to curb the traffic of people into the country. The U.K.'s fertility rate fell to about 1.7 children per woman today from as high as 2.9 children in the 1960s. Italy faces one of the worst crises, with about 14 percent of gross domestic product already dedicated to funding pensions compared to 5 percent in the U.S. Italy's population is declining by 139,000 people a year. By contrast, the retirement system in the U.S. will be sound for decades, giving policy makers plenty of time to resolve the issue per the Federal Reserve Governor Edward Gramlich. There could be modest changes made to the system that would eliminate the actuarial deficit per Gramlich in a Jan. 12 interview.

 

Any attempt to create private savings accounts would be too risky for retirees' savings. Simply indexing the Social Security retirement age to life expectancy would erase much of the future shortfall per the chairman of the advisory panel on Social Security. That would entail little more than raising the age about a year every other decade.

 

Falling birthrates aren't just affecting the wealthiest nations. China, the world's most-populous country, India and Brazil are experiencing a drop in fertility levels.

China's fertility rate is 1.86 children per woman, down from about six per woman in 1966, according to the UN. By 2050, 30 percent of the population will be over 65, compared to 25.5 percent in the U.S., according to the UN. At current fertility rates, Europe's population is set to fall from 728 million in 2000 to 597 million in 2050, an 18 percent drop, according to UN figures.

 

bloomberg

 

===

 

What you are doing is lying to the poeple on this board and they simply don't have the ability to see through your bull sh-- arguments. Like I said a REAL Republican doesn't have to lie in order to convince the American people to support something. We shold leave that to the Democrats.

[Losman-McGahee-Evans]

MR. RUSSERT: But why won't the Democrats or the Republicans level with the American people?

REP. EMANUEL: Well, no, we will. Well, first of all, Tim, you talk about leveling with the American people, as you just said, Social Security right now is--in 2042 we face the challenge. He wants to use the word crisis.

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No the fact that you posted this and it supports my points and destroys yours defines "priceless".

 

Nice work Captain Talking Points.

[Losman-McGahee-Evans]

"Democrats believe in individual retirement plans as a supplement to Social Security. I think the crisis that we have today, it applies to the fact that people do not have retirement plans on top of Social Security..."

 

So let me see if I have Mr. Emanuel's position clear...Social Security is intended to provide people a means to retire not requiring individual retirement plans...but the problem with Social Security is that too many people intend for it to provide a means to retire not requiring individual retirement plans. 

 

Or, in short: the biggest problem with Social Security is that he (even though he said "Democrats", I'll be more than fair and assume that the majority of Democrats are laughing at this twit) wants it to do something that he admits it's fundamentally incapable of doing. 

 

Nice friggin' reasoning there.

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"Rep. Phil English, R-Erie, who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and is a longtime advocate for tax code changes, said he thought there could be considerable support for Thomas' idea of working on Social Security and tax issues at the same time.

 

English said it was important to 'reposition' the debate over the nation's retirement program. "I think Chairman Thomas made an important contribution to the debate by sending a message to the White House that we need to be flexible and bipartisan in how we approach Social Security reform," he said.

 

Thomas "played a very important role in reminding those involved in the debate that there are number of things we can do that will improve the solvency from Social Security, quite apart from the creation of individual accounts," English said. "And he also correctly and directly made it clear that individual accounts by themselves will only marginally improve the performance of the system overall."

 

So let me get this straight. He's saying essentially the same thing that Emanuel is saying? Nice reasoning there.