by Michael Tanner

Cato Institute

02/03/05

Overall, Social Security's unfunded liabilities total nearly $12 trillion, and the longer we wait, the worse it gets. Estimates suggest that each year that we wait to reform Social Security costs between $150 billion and $600 billion more. That sure looks like a crisis to me. But the larger crisis is not about the system's finances. It is about workers forced to pay 12.4% of their wages into a system that cannot pay them the promised level of benefits. It is about a system where workers have no real ownership of their benefits, and where low- and middle-income workers cannot accumulate wealth that they can use in retirement and pass along to their heirs...

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3663


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp