WHAT THE MEDIA WON'T TELL YOU ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY [Excerpts from a statement by Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute to the White House Conference on Social Security] * The increased cost of Social Security over the next 75 years will amount to about 2.5 percent of GDP. This is not an extraordinary economic burden. In comparison, increased education spending between 1946 and 1966 cost almost 3 percent of GDP. And increases in Social Security taxes between aol.com search find email addresses free 1960 and 1995 amounted to roughly 2.5 percent of GDP. Throughout this period, economic growth continued, living standards rose, and we were able to finance the Cold War. * One hundred percent of the shortfall can be covered as follows: -- Applying to the Social Security projections technical improvements in the forecasting of prices that have already been made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics but that have not yet been incorporated into the projections. (13 percent) -- find someones email find email addresses free Raising the "cap" on taxable wages back to the level, relative to all wages, at which it stood in the early 1980s - $97,000 in today's dollars. This would also entail raising the cap on benefit payments. (25 percent) -- A small increase in the payroll tax, indexed to the increase in longevity. The increase needed would be 0.02 percent annually for both the employer and employee contribution. (64 percent) * That Americans will be living longer is find email addresses free find email addresses free good news. But it will mean spending more years on Social Security, which will cost more. The choice is cutting benefits or paying a little more in taxes. Cutting benefits would mean living longer at a lower living standard, and would be particularly hard for the 42 percent of the elderly whom Social Security lifts out of poverty. Even in the trustees' pessimistic projections, real wages will rise 1.1 percent per year, making a tax increase of surname search find email addresses free 0.02 percent
