BTP is back after being silenced by evil doers inside the Internet. The involuntary break gave me the opportunity to calm down after seeing an NYT personal finance column that told people to assume that they will collect little or none of their Social Security benefits ("Plan to Retire But Leave Social Security Out of the Equation"). The columnist bought the scare stories hook line and sinker. Just to remind everyone, the porjections from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office show that the program can pay all scheduled benefits through the year 2046, with no changes whatsoever. Even after this date, the program could continue to pay 80 percent of scheduled benefits indefinitely, again assuming that no changes are ever made. Of course, Congress would almost certainly vote to raise taxes enough to sustain benefits, as it did in the decades of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I base this assessment on the fact that the elderly will be more than twice as large a share of the electorate in the 2046 than they were at the time that Congress voted for prior tax increases (sophisticated political analysis, huh?). Anyhow, this piece was an outrage -- I am glad that I had two days to calm down.
--Dean Baker
