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Social Security Reform Thursday: Week Forty -- German Social Security Disaster.

Thursdays are good days for reform, because they fall between Wednesdays and Fridays. And reform is a long-haul process, not a fleeting event. So we're going to keep plugging along with the case for reform, even as the issue goes off the political radar screen.

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

This week's topic:

German Disaster: Where We're Heading.

Germany's economy is in very real trouble, drowning in a sea of socialism. Its Social Security system is, in large part, to blame. If we don't fix ours A.S.A.P., we could end up the same way.

Check out the German equivalent of the American payroll tax rate:

Ouch.

Now, notice the rise of public debt in Germany:

It would be a cop-out to focus on German reunification too much here. Look at the trends before 1991. Already unhealthy.

Now, notice the rise of unemployment (not rate, but numbers of people):

And it has only gotten worse over the past two years, reaching above 5 million earlier this year.

And there's no relief in sight for Germany. Social Security already consumes an inordinate amount of Germany's GDP, and the projections don't look good:

Germany will increase its social security spending by 50 percent between now and 2017, the Financial Times Deutschland reports....

Germany, which paid 53.9 billion euros ($65.6 billion) into its public pension plans in 2003, is set to pay 76.5 billion euros ($93.2 billion) in 2017, the Financial Times' analysis of an internal German Finance Ministry document indicates.

German Finance Minister Hans Eichel has already complained every third dollar he spends goes to social security funds. Eichel has said the large cost of public pensions is a drain on German finances.

Something to look forward to here in America, sans Social Security reform.

Interesting is the fact that Social Security's pay-as-you-go pyramid scheme is a Prussian invention. Otto von Bismarck came up with that one.

Way to go, Otto. Classy move.

Not.

It's time for reform.

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).
-Week Thirty-Four (Longer Life Expectancies Straining Social Security).
-Week Thirty-Five (Howard Dean & Salami).
-Week Thirty-Six (Growing Numbers of Beneficiaries Draining Social Security).
-Week Thirty-Seven (The Crisis Is Now).
-Week Thirty-Eight (Disability Benefits).
-Week Thirty-Nine (Broken Benefit Calculation Formula).

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

Posted by Will Franklin · 10 November 2005 11:37 AM

Comments

Posted by: Ken McCracken at November 10, 2005 11:52 AM

Posted by: Hoodlumman at November 10, 2005 03:26 PM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at November 11, 2005 07:01 AM