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March 23, 2005

Attention Weirdos!

Max Sawicky will be covering, live on his website, the 12:30 pm ET press conference today on the release of the 2005 Social Security Trustees report. Go here or possibly here.

As a longstanding weirdo, I will certainly be there myself.

UPDATE: HOLY CRAP!

The Trustees have moved the trust fund exhaustion date up from 2042 to 2041. This is (almost) certainly bogus and politically motivated.

Mr. Sawicky will soon have more details.

UPDATE UPDATE: Mr. Atrios is also digging into the report.

UPDATE TO UPDATE, UPDATED: For genuine freaks, Dean Baker's dry-as-bone take on the Trustees Report is here.

UPDATE ON MY COMPULSION TO UPDATE: My assumption of political hanky-panky is probably unfounded. See more Max Sawicky. The culprit appears to be reality: if I understand the cause of the change, it's that—while GDP and productivity growth were high last year—wage growth sucked and was lower than projected. (Ie, the economy's doing great, but Americans are having trouble.) Any corrections and/or further information appreciated.

Posted at March 23, 2005 10:56 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Given Baker's comments, that lower-than-expected wage growth is part of the problem, wouldn't a more progressive tax system combined with a higher minimum wage improve that? Would it cut into job growth, or would it increase baseline consumption and multiply through the economy with higher production and job growth?

I'm a crappy modeler, I'm just a reporter with oily skin. Please help me.

Posted by: oily messter at March 23, 2005 03:01 PM