The slight improvement in the forecast for the Social Security Trust Funds is largely a false positive that results more from optimistic estimates than improvements to the system's fundamentals.
The report increases the projected exhaustion point from 2033 to 2034. But the assumptions on which the increase is based isn't terribly more realistic than expecting leprechauns to spit out gold coins to pay for the imbalances.
The improvement in the system’s prospects do not come from people working in a better economy. The Trustees have offset what is with what might be. 2014 wasn’t good, but 2016-2089 are going to be fantastic! Understand that the drivers of the progress are jobs that do not yet exist and wage increases that have not occurred.
The longer piece was written for FedSmith.Com (read more)
This isn't the first piece questioning the Trustees estimates.
Jed Graham, (see Why The Trustees Of Social Security Can't Be Trusted)
David Stockman (see The 2015 Untrustworthies Report )
American Journal Of Economic Perspectives (see Systematic Bias and Nontransparency in US Social Security Administration Forecasts)
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