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Social Security Reform Thursday: Week Thirty-Four -- People Living Longer Straining The System.

Thursdays are good days for reform, because they fall between Wednesdays and Fridays. And reform is a long-haul process, not a fleeting event.

That's why WILLisms.com offers a chart or graph, every Thursday, pertinent to Social Security reform.

This week's topic:

Growth In Life Expectancy Makes Social Security Untenable.

The Urban Institute notes that longer life expectancy, while certainly a good thing, means that people will receive Social Security benefits for much longer (.pdf):

Not only are more people beginning to collect Social Security benefits, they are projected to collect it for far longer than anyone in the early days of the program.

Unfortunately, resources are limited. We can't afford this profound growth in entitlement spending (and let's not forget that most spending growth in the Bush administration, 2001 to 2005, has come not from the dreaded pork barrel, but from large automatic increases in entitlement spending).

Meanwhile, the Baby Boom ended nearly half a century ago. Lower birthrates mean slower labor force growth today than when Social Security was set up in the 1930s. And labor force growth is projected to get even slower in the future (.pdf):

This is why reform is so imperative. More people, collecting more benefits, for longer, with less workers to pay for those benefits. It's not a recipe for a sustainable program.

Here's a terrible idea: let's put off passing GROW Accounts or any other reform of the program "because of Katrina." Because that makes so much sense. Not. A short-term negative economic jolt means we should let a rapidly approaching long-term economic drag fester and boil? Hmm.

The clock is ticking.

Previous Reform Thursday graphics can be seen here:

-Week One (Costs Exceed Revenues).
-Week Two (Social Security Can't Pay Promised Benefits).
-Week Three (Americans Getting Older).
-Week Three, bonus (The Templeton Curve).
-Week Four (Fewer Workers, More Retirees).
-Week Five (History of Payroll Tax Base Increases).
-Week Six (Seniors Living Longer).
-Week Six, bonus (Less Workers, More Beneficiaries).
-Week Seven (History of Payroll Tax Increases).
-Week Seven, bonus (Personal Accounts Do Achieve Solvency).
-Week Eight (Forty Year Trend Of Increasing Mandatory Spending).
-Week Nine (Diminishing Benefits Sans Reform).
-Week Ten (Elderly Dependence On Social Security).
-Week Eleven (Entitlement Spending Eating The Budget).
-Week Twelve (Benefit Comparison, Bush's Plan versus No Plan).
-Week Thirteen (Younger Americans and Lifecycle Funds).
-Week Fourteen (The Thrift Savings Plan).
-Week Fifteen (Understanding Progressive Indexing).
-Week Sixteen (The Graying of America).
-Week Seventeen (Debunking Myths).
-Week Eighteen (Debunking Myths).
-Week Nineteen (Reform Needed Sooner Rather Than Later).
-Week Twenty (Global Success With Personal Accounts).
-Week Twenty-One (GROW Accounts: Stopping The Raid).
-Week Twenty-Two (Millions of Lockboxes).
-Week Twenty-Three (Support for Ryan-DeMint).
-Week Twenty-Four (KidSave Accounts).
-Week Twenty-Five (Latinos and Social Security).
-Week Twenty-Six (AmeriSave).
-Week Twenty-Seven (Cost Of Doing Nothing).
-Week Twenty-Eight (Chile).
-Week Twenty-Nine (Entitlement Spending Out Of Control).
-Week Thirty (Reform Better Deal Than Status Quo).
-Week Thirty-One (Social Security As A Labor Cost).
-Week Thirty-Two (Social Security And Dependence On Government).
-Week Thirty-Three (Social Security, Currently A Bad Deal For African-Americans).

Tune into WILLisms.com each Thursday for more important graphical data supporting Social Security reform.

Posted by Will Franklin · 29 September 2005 10:22 AM

Comments

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at September 29, 2005 11:02 AM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at September 29, 2005 11:18 AM