The Sky Isn't Falling!

Today's statement by the Social Security trustees was pretty much expected; you knew that by hook or by crook, they'd gerry-rig so that they could throw out a headline that "The Trust Fund IS Going Broke Faster!" But if you look into the report past the headline (that payouts will outrun revenues by 2017, not 2018, and that the Trust Fund will run out of money by 2041), the way Kevin Drum did, you'll see something striking:

It turns out that although the trustees have fiddled with the numbers to bring in the trust fund exhaustion date from 2042 to 2041 — which makes for good headlines — the long term outlook is actually better than it was last year.

Got that? In only a single year, the projected deficit in 2080 has gone down from 6.0% of taxable payroll to 5.75% of taxable payroll. Another few years of supposed doom and gloom like this and even George Bush won't be able to pretend that Social Security is in crisis.

Here's the chart:



Never mind the fact that the projections assume absurdly low economic growth, the lowest since the Great Depression. By virtue of their own facts and figures, things are getting better. Which, by the way, has always been the case. In 1997, the Trust Fund was only supposed to last until 2029. Now, eight years later, it's pushed out 12 years.

So I remind you to do more than read the crawl under CNN when researching this issue.