Friday, January 07, 2005

Stop the Bush Plan for Wrecking Social Security

     The 75 year projections of the Social Security Trustees are based on annual GDP growth of 1.5%.

     Bu$hCo's Social Security Commission Privateers base their estimates on an annual stock market returns of 6.5% over inflation.

     It is impossible to have a 6.5%-over-inflation market return for seventy five years and annual GDP growth, for the same period, of only 1.5%.

     If the Social Security Trustees used the larger GDP growth figures implied by the 6.5% market growth, there is no long term problem.

     One set of figures for the old system, another set of figures for the new.

     Here is economist PhD and UC Berkeley Professor J Brad DeLong saying the same thing...

In other words, the stock market can attain its 6-7% per year real payoff only if the macroeconomic news in the future is much better than [the] Social Security [Trustees are] projecting, in which case there's no Social Security financing problem at all.

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