Monday, February 14, 2005
my little thought about Social Security
Does Social Security need to fix?
Why did Bill Clinton declare to "Save Social Security First"? And now Bush's new fix is controvertial?
That is before the Internet Bubble (2000) and a looming surplus to use for setting up an ad hoc scheme (letting workers contribute a portion of their wages ON TOP of the current payroll tax, and government matches dollar-for-dollar)...
It was then. Now the simple math is, as illuminouly pointed out by Michael Kinsley (here, free registration required, or see the end of this post), the new system (private account which is diverted from a portion of social security) must be producing more than the existing social security, otherwise there is no point....
* * *
The Meathead Proposition
Another Irrefutable Argument Against Privatizing Social Security
By Michael KinsleySunday, February 13, 2005; Page B07
Try to forgive my obsession, but here is another proof that President Bush's designs for Social Security cannot work. This one's not mine. I first heard it from the actor and liberal activist Rob Reiner. Like the argument I have been hawking (see www.latimes.com/proof), this one doesn't merely suggest that Bush is making bad policy. It demonstrates with near-mathematical certainty that the idea he endorses can't work. Period.
Bush might as well be proposing legislation that two plus two is five. And if that happened, there would be no shortage of Republicans prepared to endorse this view, experts on arithmetic to declare that it is a very difficult question, research to indicate that the answer may lie anywhere between 2.3 and 7.09, moderate Washington sages to urge caution, media to report both sides of the question, and media critics to accuse the media of a subtle bias in favor of two plus two is four.
The Meathead Proposition (in honor of Reiner's most famous role) is this. The case that there is a Social Security crisis and the proposal to address it through "personal retirement accounts" both depend on assumptions about the course of the economy over the next few decades. These assumptions are highly speculative, but that's okay. What's not okay is to assume one thing when you claim there is a problem and something different when you claim that you've got the solution.
Actually, Bush abruptly gave up his claim that privatization will solve the problem of a looming shortfall in Social Security funds. The truth is that privatization schemes assume that the shortfall will be addressed -- by borrowing trillions of dollars -- as part of the "transition" to privatization. But Bush still claims that letting people keep and invest for themselves part of what they now pay into Social Security during their working years will leave them better off than if they get the benefits they are now entitled to.
How much better off depends on how much your government benefits will be reduced for every dollar you choose to keep and invest for yourself. That is one of the little details the White House hasn't yet enlightened us about. But this new system as a whole -- Social Security plus the private accounts -- must somehow produce more money than Social Security alone, or there is no point.
My previous argument, in a nutshell, was that even if these private investments do better than the government bonds in which the current Social Security surplus is invested, this won't change the total amount being invested in the private economy, or increase the economic growth that comes from private investment, because the government will just have to go out and borrow elsewhere to replace the dollars it isn't able to borrow from Social Security. And that means that every time someone puts a Social Security dollar into a private account, someone else must be persuaded to take a dollar currently invested in the private economy and put it in government bonds.
To get the scheme enacted, Bush must convince Americans of the exact opposite: that private-sector investment will make them better off than fuddy-duddy old government bonds. Basically, privatization schemes assume that the alleged inferiority of government bonds can be our little secret for the next few decades -- just us folks in the Social Security system. And so we can just unload a few trillion in government bonds on all those two or three Americans who aren't in Social Security, plus maybe some hapless foreigners.
Privatization schemes assume that this will have no effect on how much interest the government will have to pay, or what kind of long-term return you can expect on investments in the private economy. For example the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a major thumper for privatization, assumes that private accounts can earn a long-term, risk-free return of 4.7 percent after inflation, which they say is based on history.
But if free markets work the way they are supposed to -- and I would like to hear the Heritage Foundation say that they do not -- the effect of the government's announcing that government bonds are a bad investment and officially pushing people to put their money elsewhere will be to make it more expensive for the government to borrow money. So even if private stocks and bonds are a better long-term investment than government bonds (after factoring in risk and so on), they won't stay that way for long. Meanwhile, in their latest report, the Social Security trustees assume that growth in the nation's gross domestic product will slow from 4.4 percent to 1.8 percent in 2015 and will stay there for the next six decades. They predict productivity growth of 1.6 percent and average unemployment of 5.5 percent. From this and other data, the trustees predict that the trust fund will earn 3 percent a year (5.8 percent interest minus 2.8 percent inflation). This is their "intermediate" assumption, from which Bush concludes that the shortfall will hit the fan in 2042.
These assumptions about the unknowable are not unreasonable. Nor are the assumptions of the Heritage Foundation. What is unreasonable is using both sets of assumptions at the same time. Can a conservative investment in stocks and bonds grow by 4.7 percent a year, for decades, while productivity is growing by 1.6 percent and the economy by 1.8 percent? Theoretically possible, perhaps. But likely? On average?
If you start by assuming that one investment pays better than another, it's not very surprising (or persuasive) if this is also your conclusion. A dollar a year invested for 37 years (now until 2042) at 3 percent interest produces $66. At 4.7 percent, it's $95. If the Heritage Foundation is right, there is no crisis to fix. And if the Social Security trustees are right, the Heritage fix won't work.
If Meathead can figure this out, why can't W?
The writer is editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times.
Why did Bill Clinton declare to "Save Social Security First"? And now Bush's new fix is controvertial?
That is before the Internet Bubble (2000) and a looming surplus to use for setting up an ad hoc scheme (letting workers contribute a portion of their wages ON TOP of the current payroll tax, and government matches dollar-for-dollar)...
It was then. Now the simple math is, as illuminouly pointed out by Michael Kinsley (here, free registration required, or see the end of this post), the new system (private account which is diverted from a portion of social security) must be producing more than the existing social security, otherwise there is no point....
* * *
The Meathead Proposition
Another Irrefutable Argument Against Privatizing Social Security
By Michael KinsleySunday, February 13, 2005; Page B07
Try to forgive my obsession, but here is another proof that President Bush's designs for Social Security cannot work. This one's not mine. I first heard it from the actor and liberal activist Rob Reiner. Like the argument I have been hawking (see www.latimes.com/proof), this one doesn't merely suggest that Bush is making bad policy. It demonstrates with near-mathematical certainty that the idea he endorses can't work. Period.
Bush might as well be proposing legislation that two plus two is five. And if that happened, there would be no shortage of Republicans prepared to endorse this view, experts on arithmetic to declare that it is a very difficult question, research to indicate that the answer may lie anywhere between 2.3 and 7.09, moderate Washington sages to urge caution, media to report both sides of the question, and media critics to accuse the media of a subtle bias in favor of two plus two is four.
The Meathead Proposition (in honor of Reiner's most famous role) is this. The case that there is a Social Security crisis and the proposal to address it through "personal retirement accounts" both depend on assumptions about the course of the economy over the next few decades. These assumptions are highly speculative, but that's okay. What's not okay is to assume one thing when you claim there is a problem and something different when you claim that you've got the solution.
Actually, Bush abruptly gave up his claim that privatization will solve the problem of a looming shortfall in Social Security funds. The truth is that privatization schemes assume that the shortfall will be addressed -- by borrowing trillions of dollars -- as part of the "transition" to privatization. But Bush still claims that letting people keep and invest for themselves part of what they now pay into Social Security during their working years will leave them better off than if they get the benefits they are now entitled to.
How much better off depends on how much your government benefits will be reduced for every dollar you choose to keep and invest for yourself. That is one of the little details the White House hasn't yet enlightened us about. But this new system as a whole -- Social Security plus the private accounts -- must somehow produce more money than Social Security alone, or there is no point.
My previous argument, in a nutshell, was that even if these private investments do better than the government bonds in which the current Social Security surplus is invested, this won't change the total amount being invested in the private economy, or increase the economic growth that comes from private investment, because the government will just have to go out and borrow elsewhere to replace the dollars it isn't able to borrow from Social Security. And that means that every time someone puts a Social Security dollar into a private account, someone else must be persuaded to take a dollar currently invested in the private economy and put it in government bonds.
To get the scheme enacted, Bush must convince Americans of the exact opposite: that private-sector investment will make them better off than fuddy-duddy old government bonds. Basically, privatization schemes assume that the alleged inferiority of government bonds can be our little secret for the next few decades -- just us folks in the Social Security system. And so we can just unload a few trillion in government bonds on all those two or three Americans who aren't in Social Security, plus maybe some hapless foreigners.
Privatization schemes assume that this will have no effect on how much interest the government will have to pay, or what kind of long-term return you can expect on investments in the private economy. For example the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a major thumper for privatization, assumes that private accounts can earn a long-term, risk-free return of 4.7 percent after inflation, which they say is based on history.
But if free markets work the way they are supposed to -- and I would like to hear the Heritage Foundation say that they do not -- the effect of the government's announcing that government bonds are a bad investment and officially pushing people to put their money elsewhere will be to make it more expensive for the government to borrow money. So even if private stocks and bonds are a better long-term investment than government bonds (after factoring in risk and so on), they won't stay that way for long. Meanwhile, in their latest report, the Social Security trustees assume that growth in the nation's gross domestic product will slow from 4.4 percent to 1.8 percent in 2015 and will stay there for the next six decades. They predict productivity growth of 1.6 percent and average unemployment of 5.5 percent. From this and other data, the trustees predict that the trust fund will earn 3 percent a year (5.8 percent interest minus 2.8 percent inflation). This is their "intermediate" assumption, from which Bush concludes that the shortfall will hit the fan in 2042.
These assumptions about the unknowable are not unreasonable. Nor are the assumptions of the Heritage Foundation. What is unreasonable is using both sets of assumptions at the same time. Can a conservative investment in stocks and bonds grow by 4.7 percent a year, for decades, while productivity is growing by 1.6 percent and the economy by 1.8 percent? Theoretically possible, perhaps. But likely? On average?
If you start by assuming that one investment pays better than another, it's not very surprising (or persuasive) if this is also your conclusion. A dollar a year invested for 37 years (now until 2042) at 3 percent interest produces $66. At 4.7 percent, it's $95. If the Heritage Foundation is right, there is no crisis to fix. And if the Social Security trustees are right, the Heritage fix won't work.
If Meathead can figure this out, why can't W?
The writer is editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times.
# posted by Laurent Lin : 2:56 AM
