There
are two sides to the debate. One side
talks about the size of the trust fund balances, the fact that those balances
have been growing over the years and the fact that the trust funds have been
able to meet all their obligations in past years as evidence that there isn’t an
immediate crisis.
The
other side talks about the fact that the number of those drawing benefits is
growing rapidly, especially now with the beginning of the retirement of the
Baby Boomer generation. They talk about
the trust fund projections showing that the balances will be decreasing rapidly
in the coming years and that the burden on future generations of workers will become
unsustainable without fundamental reforms.
Let’s
look at the comparison of some
information from the 2005 and 2013 trustee reports.
Some
statistics on the change from 2004 to 2012:
-
Increase
in workers contributing to Social Security: 2.5%
-
Increase
in those receiving benefits from Social Security: 18.8%- Increase in annual benefits paid: 59.4%
- Increase in total trust fund income: 27.7%
- Decrease in annual surplus: -67.3%
- Increase in unfunded liability for Social Security: 140.0%
http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/trust/trustreports.html (Reports on the year 2004)
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR05/index.html (Reports on the year 2012)
In
additional postings we’ll look at what some of the parties on each side are
saying on this topic.
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