« Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 224 -- General Motors, Michigan, Health Care, & Wealth Care. | WILLisms.com | Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 225 -- Thanksgiving. »

Social Security Reform Thursday: Week Forty-One -- Demographics & The Failing Pyramid Scheme.

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:

Unsustainable Demographics: Social Security Pyramid Scheme.

Another week, another Democrat-obstructed reform try.

The demographics have not changed. There are less workers paying for each retiree. Over the past several decades the answer has been to raise the payroll tax rate and expand the payroll tax base. With a pyramid scheme of funding crumbling underneath itself, Social Security required higher and higher taxes. In theory, a constantly growing base of younger workers would have paid for retirees.

Sort of a forced generational pact.

But it didn't quite work out that way, as the Baby Boom gave way to falling birthrates. The Boomer generational bulge is now beginning to retire. There just aren't enough workers to feasibly support all those tens of millions of retirees.

The demographics aren't getting any better, either. And they're not going away.

The pyramid scheme is crumbling.

It's time to do something about it.

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).
-Week Forty (German Social Security Disaster).

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

Posted by Will Franklin · 24 November 2005 09:52 AM

Comments

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at November 24, 2005 07:23 PM

Posted by: Justin B at November 25, 2005 02:20 AM

Posted by: Hoodlumman at November 28, 2005 09:52 PM