I checked out the link. I read the first few pages of the SS section in their entirety and skimmed through the rest. I didn't find anything that implied "With a 26% longer life expectancy but a 3% increase in retirement age (Since Social Security was created in 1935 mind you), deficits from SS could add 11.6 Trillion (or 140%) to the public debt by 2037."
What I read did say this...
Quote:
A commonly used measure of the sustainability of a program
that has a trust fund and a dedicated revenue source
is its actuarial balance—that is, the sum of the present
value of revenues and the current trust fund balance
minus the sum of the present value of outlays and a
target balance at the end of the period—over a specified
period.7 For Social Security, that difference is traditionally
presented as a percentage of the present value of taxable
payroll over the period under consideration. CBO estimates that
over the next 75 years, dedicated revenues—
payroll taxes and taxes on benefits—will fall short
of scheduled benefits in Social Security by 1.6 percent of
taxable payroll under the extended-baseline scenario (see
Table 3-1). That shortfall equals 0.6 percent of GDP. In
other words, to bring the program into actuarial balance
over the next 75 years, payroll taxes could be immediately
increased by 1.6 percent of taxable payroll and kept at
that higher rate, or scheduled benefits could be reduced
by an equivalent amount. Under the alternative fiscal
scenario, the shortfall would be 2.1 percent of taxable
payroll, or 0.8 percent of GDP.
Which is pretty much what I've been saying. SS needs only minor tweaking. Also, that 26% increase in life expectancy but 3% increase in retirement age is a bit disingenuous as it ignores the fact that payroll taxes have gone up significantly since 1935, in large part to cover the increase in life expectancies. That's why I asked for the link.
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“Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it.†– Richard Feynman
