Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> B. wrote:
>
> >I remember seeing a statistic, on the list I believe,
> >that said that Soc. Security was projected to be
> >solvent until the late 2040s - early 2050s. What is
> >this stat, what is the source, URL, etc.? Is it from
> >the Congressional Budget Office itself?
>
> All the SS stats come from the annual reports of the system's
> trustees, available at <http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/>. The latest
> projected date of reserve exhaustion is 2042. See the summary of the
> 2004 report at <http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/trsummary.html>.
"Solvent" is a tricky term. The Trust Fund, not Social Security itself, is estimated to be exhausted in 2042 by the actuaries at Social Security. If nothing is done Social Security will be able to meet about 70% of its expected obligations, the actuaries say.
The Trust Fund is a savings account specially created to meet the increased expenses due to the retirement of baby boomers. It was part of the Greenspan Commission reforms of 1983. It might have worked too except that real wages did not live up to expectations.
You should be aware that this estimate is the "best guess" estimate. There are three estimates prepared by the actuaries: a pessimistic estimate, the best guess, and the optimistic. These are 75 year estimates. So far as I know nobody can estimate 75 years.
IMO, this is a phony crisis as Dean Baker has called it.
John