Kevin Drum: More Social Security Doom-Mongering....

Over at Slate, Will Saletan has yet another entry in one of journalism's favorite genres: the Social Security doomsday story. It's chock full of the usual grim statistics: we're living longer, we're retiring earlier, there are fewer workers to support each retiree, and the taxes to keep up with all this are going to bankrupt us before long. In short, we're completely screwed.

Please. Can we just stop with this stuff? The financial projections for Social Security really aren't that complicated, and the Social Security trustees take into account all the stuff that Saletan mentions. They know perfectly well that lifespans are increasing and they include that in their models — along with a dozen other trends that Saletan doesn't mention. And it turns out that the results aren't really very scary at all.