ATTN: Social Security buffs... related paper topic?

[dpakman91]

have to do a paper for a grad class, and have chosen to do something on social security for a number of reasons. the paper has to be 10-12 pages.

I originally said i would do something along the lines of "is social security really in trouble?" but was told that was too broad. the professor suggested i do something on "what is the viability of a specific plan to fix soc sec" or something.

anyway, can anyone more familiar with what options i might have throw something out that might be the right scope for 10-12 pages?

[kinggovernor]

well the three popular options are:

raising the age or other ways of cutting spending
privatizing SS by creating a form of private retirement accounts
raising taxes

[A_C_E]

You might also look at projections about income growth and how that will affect the Social Security trust fund. Not to get too economical, but the government forecasts for SS assume near-zero productivity growth (worst-case scenario) and therefore fail to take into account what will, presumably, happen as productivity grows: wages rise and more money is paid into the SS system. This is a very important point in the debate on whether or not SS is in major trouble.

For a great reference paper, check out this from EPI:

Productivity growth and Social Security's future

[dpakman91]

Originally Posted by A_C_E

You might also look at projections about income growth and how that will affect the Social Security trust fund. Not to get too economical, but the government forecasts for SS assume near-zero productivity growth (worst-case scenario) and therefore fail to take into account what will, presumably, happen as productivity grows: wages rise and more money is paid into the SS system. This is a very important point in the debate on whether or not SS is in major trouble.

For a great reference paper, check out this from EPI:

Productivity growth and Social Security's future

ok...i have an econ degree undergrad, and nba with econ focus, so we CAN get economical, but for this class i don't know that i'm suposed to...

[Ardentfrost]

Originally Posted by dpakman91

ok...i have an econ degree undergrad, and nba with econ focus, so we CAN get economical, but for this class i don't know that i'm suposed to...

You have an nba?

What is the focus of the class? If you don't want to get all mathy then keeping it general and weighing the pros and cons of the various solutions would probably be good and would fill your pages pretty easy.

[DosEquis]

I dunno..but if i had to do one i would be sure to include the things contributing to its demise, the main one... we have been spending the money on other things besides SS benefits, thus the fund is significantly less than it should be....screwing up how much we can afford to pay out later.

[7960]

I can't help.

But, if you come across that graph that shows how many people contributed to SS for each person on SS when it first started and continued to show how many people contribute now for each person on it, please post it here.

[6SpeedTA95]

Social Security Reform - Brookings Institution

///http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/solvency/DiamondOrszag_20031008.html


///http://www.worldbank.org/knowledge/chiefecon/conferen/papers/rethinking.pdf

///http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/orszag/200504security.pdf

///http://www.cbpp.org/3-11-99socsec.pdf

For some reason the links are not working so in order for you to see them I've had to hack them a bit...

pakman here's a few of the papers I've read in the past. All of which are pretty good, hopefully this will help you gather some information, Peter Orszag really knows his shit when it comes to SS so if the papers I've linked are too long you can find others and some shorter articles by him that might help you. This is what I had on my links to SS though, so maybe it'll help you?

[dpakman91]

excellent, thanks to everyone. i should be able to narrow down a specific SS related topic from all this info

[thomez]

Examine the viability and expected results had the Bush plan got through Congress.

[dpakman91]

So i've settled on a general broader view topic, basically looking at the question of "is soc sec really in crisis" and "how it might be fixed." I'm thinking the following general outline:

Intro, which includes a brief history of soc sec

Discussions of various arguments for why it IS in crisi

Discussion of arguments why everything is fine

Discussion of potential fixes, provided it really is in crisis

Wrap up
------------

I have a while to do this so i'm kinda taking it slow...first off, does anyone have input as to specifics of what hsould be included in each spection, or if maybe i need to even rethink the general layout?