Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Social Security risks on the horizon

Jason Fichtner and Frederick Kilbourne write in Investors Business Daily that the Social Security Trustees should watch for unexpected but important risks to the program’s finances. Check it out here.

2 comments:

WilliamLarsen said...

The black swan event is a reality. It does happen. Will it happen to Social Security?

Based on the trustees calculating a $23.1 Trillion infinite horizon present value shortfall seems to contradict the previous 3.9 to 4.0% increase in the SS-OASI tax. These two values do not support each other.

Politics Debunked said...

There are far more problems with the Social Security forecast than those social scientists the article references points out, they are optimistic in too many assumptions, and regarding the accuracy of their predictions (based on low and high figures) which indicate they think they can for instance forecast GDP out to 2090 or so more accurately than it is even measured. The current report seems to use the same flawed methods that this page critiques in detail about the last one:
http://www.politicsdebunked.com/article-list/ssaestimates

Unfortunately the critique was done by a tech biz type looking at it as if it were a "business plan", not a beltway insider analyst so word hasn't spread to the appropriate people about the flaws, I assume it winds up in junk email when busy policy analysts are contacted.