On May 31, the Social Security Board of Trustees submitted its annual report to members of Congress and the White House, which concluded that Social Security “does not face an immediate crisis,” as noted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ summary of the report. The report recommends that lawmakers prudently address long-term solvency concerns, but need not immediately adopt deep benefit cuts.
The Economic Policy Institute argued, contrary to most news coverage, that the challenges facing Social Security are “modest and manageable.” Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman had a similar reaction to the latest Social Security report, noting “the system will be able to pay most of its scheduled benefits as far as the eye can see.” Krugman also recognized the irrationality of arguments made by those who claim to want to save Social Security from eventual collapse:
The risk is that we might, at some point in the future, have to cut benefits; to avoid this risk of future benefit cuts, we are supposed to act pre-emptively by…cutting future benefits. What problem, exactly, are we solving here?
