IR

Kaspars Bērziņš Morten, to evaluate the budget sustainability you should take into account not only the share of pensions against he GDP (5.6% or 8.3%) but the ratio of public sector v/s GDP as well. Latvia has very low public sector revenues against the GDP, therefore our 8.3% could take the same share of public spending as in the 'double digit' countries.
The similar thing here - US has moderate spending on social security. However, it is unsustainable with the current tax rates.

Nasing spešal! @Morten
Well, good indication of bottle-neck situation, but what could be potential solutions?

juris_briedis Yes, that is a real worry for us what will happen in 50 years :(

kents tātad nedaudz par ASV un dažiem mītiem, kurus patīk atkārtot pravdīgajiem tārpiņiem:


Nine Misconceptions About Social Security

To take a voguish example: Privatize Social Security? Any money saved would be eaten up in Wall Street transaction costs, including million-dollar salaries


www.theatlantic.com/m...

kents un nedaudz par veselības aprūpes sistēmu:

www.huffingtonpost.co...

In three or four decades we are projected to pay three or four times as much per person for health care as people in countries like Germany and Canada. Since more than half of our health care is paid through public sector programs like Medicare and Medicaid, this explosion in health care costs will bankrupt the government if it actually occurs. Of course it will also devastate the private sector.

On the other hand, it is easy to show that if we contain health care costs then our budget problems are relatively minor. In fact, the current projections of enormous budget deficits two or three decades out would flip over to projections of enormous budget surpluses if our health care costs were comparable to those of any other wealthy country.

Logic would dictate that our top priority should be getting our health care costs under control. But fixing health care is difficult because, as we saw in the health care debate, this means confronting the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical supply industry, highly paid medical specialists and other powerful lobbies.

The deficit hawks don't want to fight this fight. Defeating these powerful interest groups would be a hard fight. And for the deficit hawks it would likely be an especially painful fight since these are their friends.

By contrast, the Wall Street deficit hawks don't have friends who depend on social security for their income. Wall Street investment bankers like Peter Peterson and Robert Rubin are unlikely to associate with such people. This is why they see attacking social security as easy.

Of course attacking social security makes as much sense as our generals' plan to attack Canada. The Congressional Budget Office's projections show that the program can pay full benefits until the year 2044 with no changes whatsoever. Even after that date the program would always pay a higher benefit than what current retirees receive, even though somewhat less than the full scheduled benefits.

The long-term problem is not that anything improper has been done with the program; the reason that social security is projected to eventually face a shortfall is that future generations are projected to live longer than we do. This raises costs since our children and grandchildren are projected to enjoy longer retirements than we do. In short, there is no story of generational inequity here, contrary to what the Wall Street deficit hawks say.

If our deficit hawk generals are too scared to take on the health care industry then we also have to also make them too scared to take on social security. If we need to reduce the deficit the best place to start is a financial speculation tax. A modest set of financial transactions taxes, like the 0.5% tax on stock trades in the United Kingdom, can easily raise $150bn a year. This would go a long way toward addressing future budget shortfalls and it would raise money from people who can afford it: the Wall Street crew whose financial shenanigans led to the meltdown.

kents May 16, 2011

The Good News and the Bad News in the Social Security Trustees' Report

www.cepr.net/index.ph...

kents šis raksts īpaši uzjautrina:

Has the Washington Post Gone Mad?
www.cepr.net/index.ph...

CONFUSED READERS may wonder based on its lead editorial complaining that supporters of Social Security: "pursue a maddening strategy of minimizing the existence of any problem and accusing those who seek solutions of trying to destroy Social Security (emphasis added)."

The piece begins by telling readers that: "THIS YEAR, for the first time since 1983, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it receives from payroll taxes -- $41 billion. This development is not an emergency, but it is a warning sign (emphasis in original)." It certainly is a warning sign. The falloff in Social Security tax revenue is a warning that the economy is seriously depressed due to the collapse of the housing bubble. Double digit unemployment leads to all sorts of problems, including the strains that it places on pension funds like Social Security.

In a sane newspaper the next sentence would be pointing out the urgent need to get back to full employment. Instead the Post tells readers:

"Too soon, this year's anomaly will become the norm. By 2037, all the Social Security reserves will have been drained and the income flowing into the program will only be enough to pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits. If that sounds tolerable, consider that two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security as their main source of income. The average annual benefit is $14,000. Those who care most about avoiding such painful cuts ought to be working on ways to bolster the program's finances -- and soon, when the necessary changes will be less drastic than if action is postponed."

Let's see, it would be intolerable to have Social Security pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits in 2037, but one of the Post preferred cuts is raising the retirement age to 70,a 15 percent cut in benefits when fully phased in. So the Post thinks it would be just fine to have beneficiaries get 85 percent of scheduled benefits in 2037.

Of course doing nothing today, or for the next decade, or even the next two decades, does not imply that beneficiaries will see their benefits cuts by 25 percent in 2037. The Post may not be familiar with the way Congress works, but it tends to wait until issues require action. They would know this if they had heard about the Greenspan Commission, which was established in 1982 to deal with Social Security's last crisis. It produced a set of fixes which is now expected to keep the program solvent for 54 years, and no one missed a check.

While it would not be desirable to wait until the system was literally facing a shortfall, as was the case when the Greenspan Commission, there is little obvious harm to waiting now in terms of the program's finances. A Greenspan Commission size fix put in place in 2030 would leave the program fully solvent for most of the rest of the century.

There is also a very good reason for delay. The opponents of Social Security have been spending huge amounts of money deliberately promoting misinformation. Peter Peterson, the richest and most prominent opponent, has repeatedly asserted that the Social Security trust fund does not exist. This flat earth view of the program has been given respectful treatment at the highest levels of government. When Peterson put on a daylong program on the deficit in the spring both of the co-chairs of President Obama's deficit commission took part in the program as did former President Clinton.

This massive effort to undermine confidence in the program has been largely successful. Polls show that substantial majorities of younger workers do not expect to receive their Social Security benefits.

That is not a good environment in which to debate substantial changes to the country's most important social program. Since there are several decades until the program faces any real problems, it is entirely reasonable for those who support the program to focus on educating the public about the program's financial health and to seek to delay any major changes until the Peterson-type misinformation campaigns have been defeated.

kents tas, ka tev patīk daudz ko reducēt uz personālijām un skaitāmpantiņiem - tas nav nekas jauns

Dean Baker, teiksim,jau gadiem ,pirms notika burbuļa plīšana, rakstīja par šo sppekulāciju risku pasaules ekonomikai (atšķirībā no tādiem ideoloģiskiem tārpiņiem kā Morten Hansen vai nepaulītis no ir.lv)

tāpat šī ekonomista analīzes ir izturējušas laika un burbuļu pārbaudes arī attiecībā uz citām tēmām

bet nesatraucies - es nelasu tikai Dean Baker

kents gards kumosiņš ideoloģisko tārpiņu cienītājiem :

Is Anyone Ever Going to Tell the Washington Post About the Housing Bubble?
www.cepr.net/index.ph...

kents ja tik labi esat informēts par to, kas man patīk?

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secinājumus, protams, izdarīju ņemot vērā tavus komentārus - ko tad citu vēl?

bet nesatraucies - tava personālija mani īpaši neinteresē, tāpēc neuztver to pārāk personiski