| 摘要 | Read the full PDF.
Buy the book.
Introduction
The Social Security Amendments of 1972 capped nearly four decades of continuous expansion and benefit increases by boosting benefits a generous 20 percent and indexing benefits to inflation beginning in 1975. At the time, the social security trust fund balances were considered sufficient to absorb any temporary deficit caused by adverse conditions, while projections based on robust fertility rates and a stable and growing economy showed large long-run actuarial surpluses. Since 1973, social security financing has not been viewed through such rose-colored glasses. Annual reports of the trustees of the social security system began projecting long-run deficits based on lower long-run fertility rates and higher rates of inflation and unemployment than were assumed previously. An indexing flaw in the 1972 amendments was detected in 1974 which, until modified by the 1977 amendments, added substantially to projected long-run deficits of the program. Also in the mid-1970s, high rates of unemployment and inflation, coupled with declining growth rates of real wages, precipitated a rapid decline in trust fund balances. In 1977, Congress responded to the short-run financial crisis by increasing payroll taxes, but it largely ignored the long-run financing issue.
Declines in the growth of real wages have more than offset the higher payroll taxes in the 1977 amendments and once again are forcing Congress and the Reagan administration to come to the rescue of the social security system. Concurrently, Congress needs to grapple head-on with the projected seventy-five-year financing deficit resulting from assumed declines in birth and mortality rates and the trend toward early retirement. Congress naturally tends to postpone making unpopular decisions. This problem of political expedience versus economic reality has been accommodated by recent official reports on social security—for example, by the 1979 Advisory Council on Social Security and the National Commission on Social Security. Despite projecting long-run actuarial deficits, these reports in general have not thoroughly considered the issue of the affordability of future scheduled benefits and have implied that there is no immediate need to address the long-run issue. Quite the contrary, however, some potential modifications of the system, such as changing the benefit formula or the age of retirement, may take several years to implement on a fair basis, and they should be addressed without delay.
The next chapter of this study outlines the nature and causes of the financing problems, particularly those that have developed since the 1977 amendments. Chapter 3 reviews the short-run financing projections of the 1979 Advisory Council, the trustees’ 1980 Annual Report, the National Commission on Social Security (NCSS), and the trustees’ 1981 Annual Report, and compares the economic assumptions underlying them.1 The fourth chapter considers ways to close the short-run gap between social security benefits and taxes. The final chapter deals with the long-run financing issue, emphasizing the apparent conflict between the goal of high benefits and affordability.
Four conclusions arise from this analysis:
The social security financing issue has two sides—benefits and taxes—and, in light of dramatic long-run demographic shifts and uncertain financial forecasts, currently scheduled benefits should no longer be considered sacrosanct.
Benefits can be trimmed selectively so that truly needy recipients are not affected.
Accounting changes, such as interfund transfers, should not be relied on entirely to resolve the short-run financing problem.
Solutions to the projected long-run deficit should be achieved by this Congress.
Notes
Read the full report. |
