OMG! Social Security will be in really, really big trouble after the sun explodes!

[eridani]

http://www.truth-out.org/joshua-holland-were-being-conned-social-security62974

According to Bruce Bartlett, in an incredibly typical scare-piece in billionaire granny-basher Pete Peterson’s Fiscal Times, that’s not true. Social Security’s problems are immense. “The 2009 report of Social Security’s trustees,” Bartlett writes, “showed a long-term actuarial deficit in that program of $15 trillion.” That is an almost unimaginably large number, given that the entire annual output of the United States was only $14 trillion last year.

But what does it really mean? Well, it turns out that Bartlett’s not even referring to the dubious 75-year projection of the Social Security “gap.” His terrifyingly big figure actually represents the program’s “shortfall” stretching out to infinity. That’s right-- it’s the program’s “unfunded liability” if everything remains as projected forever, and assuming the earth isn’t destroyed by a moon-sized meteor at some point before forever arrives. (The geeks at the American Academy of Actuaries have suggested that the “infinite horizon” measure is complete nonsense.)

According to the 2010 Social Security Trustees’ report, the 75-year gap is estimated to be $5.4 trillion -- still a big number. But there’s another way to express it: it equals just 0.7 percent of our projected economic output over that same period. That’s less than one penny on the dollar

[Ineeda]

1. And really,

after the Rapture or 2012 or whatever, the population will be drastically diminished anyway. Less people in the pool means more for the rest. So no worries.