How does Social Security work? Is there really a financing problem?
Both candidates offer disappointing platforms. George W. Bush wants to change Social Security by diverting a portion of the payroll tax to fund Personal Retirement Accounts. John Kerry opposes privatization, supports pay as you go funding, favors a faster economic growth rate. Kerry disappoints with a website that is woefully poor in framing Social Security’s looming solvency crisis. (His new campaign book, “Our Plan for America,” is even less substantive.) Bush’s website disappoints by making promises that fail key tests of evidence and logic. The heart of the difference. Bush wants to protect benefits by changing the structure of the Social Security program. Kerry wants to protect benefits by generating a faster GDP growth rate. To see what this really means, both for the solvency of our Social Security system, and for its ability to pay benefits to retirees, we have run simulation tests on realistic versions of the Bush and Kerry approaches using our java-based Social Security Solve