I bet Mr Langer still believes there's a 'trust fund'.

No, just that 600 million Americans won't have much trouble paying for SS in 75 years.

OJ:

Older folks can keep on the clattering train if they want. I want off.

There are two real interesting passages in this article:

No one can make accurate economic predictions 75 years into the future. Long-term forecasts are notoriously inaccurate.

Oh, but we should take Mr. Langer's rosy 75-year forecast as gospel (incidentally, the most optimistic forecast I usually see is that S.S. hits the skids in 2055 -- in other words, within the probable lifetimes of our nation's youngest citizens). This is the economic equivalent of OJ's talk about dictators: If we don't know whether or not they're dangerous, take the safe route and FIX THE PROBLEM.

Baker suspects that the Bush administration will not overcome political obstacles to win partial privatization of Social Security. But if Sen. Hilary Clinton (D) of New York were to succeed Bush, she might try for it. Her husband was considering pushing for legislation that would have put 2 percentage points of payroll taxes into a private account system, Baker says.

Paul Krugman would've been dead-set against this idea, right? Right?

Does he believe the tax rate won't need to change? If so, his slide rule is broken.

The dates for the points of inflection are well known.

What Matt said - I want more than 0.8% on my return.

Don't you all see the miracles happening here? Under George HW Bush, dire stories of homeless people appeared in the evening news every night; under Clinton, all the homeless disappeared. Under Clinton, SS was going bankrupt unless each and everyone of us paid more, retiring later, and paid taxes on top of the SS that we received. When GW tried to reform SS without raising taxes, all of a sudden the problem disappeared. Another problem which will miraculously diappear is our budget deficit. The deficit will be there, but it won't be a problem anymore if Hillary becomes our president. Under GW, we look at our deficit in absolute dollars. Thus our current deficit is always higher than previous deficits. Under Hillary, the deficit will be looked at as a percentage of GDP. Since our GDP is growing at a faster pace than the growth rate of our deficit, the deficit will be "shrinking" under Hillary without her lifting a finger. Hillary will have more to spend to buy votes because the deficit is 'shrinking'. Yet, secularists don't beleve in miracles.

http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/

It's hardly a novel observation that our SS isn't going to go broke with a growing population. The countries that are in trouble are the ones with declining workforces.

ic: This year's deficit is likely to be less than last year's deficit even in nominal dollars.

All: The crisis isn't social security as such, the crisis comes next decade when FICA collects less than social security pays out, a problem that we cannot grow out of.

David - Yes. That is one of the inflection points. I believe the most current date is 2013 or 2014.

David Cohen:

Per P.J. O'Rourke, we can always open the "trust fund" and retrieve the piece of paper reading: "I.O.U. $1.2 trillion. XXX OOO THE FEDS."

Wooo, thank goodness, I was worried there for a moment...