Social Security: no fair way out 5 Edition

It's probably just as well that the White House conference on Social Security was all but ignored in the rush for the latest in impeachment news. About all that happened was that President Clinton promised to lead on the issue as soon as everyone else reached bipartisan agreement on what they w...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of commerce (Newark, N.J.)
Main Author GARY M. GALLES Gary M. Galles is professor of economics at Pepperdine University, Malibu, Calif
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York IHS Maritime & Trade 21.12.1998
Subjects
Income taxes
Privatization
Social security taxes
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:It's probably just as well that the White House conference on Social Security was all but ignored in the rush for the latest in impeachment news. About all that happened was that President Clinton promised to lead on the issue as soon as everyone else reached bipartisan agreement on what they wanted to do, and most of the discussion focused on ruling out any solution that would be "unfair." Unfortunately, ruling out all the options that could be viewed as unfair to anyone rules out all the options. The simple fact is that the government has promised trillions of dollars more in Social Security benefits than what the system's promised taxes can fund. As a result, there is no fair way out of those Social Security promises. One option is to reduce Social Security retirement benefits in one way or another. But this is not fair, because government promises of ongoing retirement support have led people to believe in continued funding at the promised levels, and to adapt their behavior to those promises.