Word: socialism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Congress overhauled the retirement program in 1983, after dire predictions that the Golden Age for the post-World War II generation would bring on the Dark Ages for Social Security. Before the reforms, the trust fund had worked more like a chain letter than a pension plan. Each current retiree's benefit check required payroll taxes from four current employees. But so many children were born right after the war and so few after 1964 that the pay-as-you-go system threatened to collapse when the boomers retired. In the first half of the next century there will...
...Sanford of North Carolina has introduced a bill that would require the trust fund to make loans for education and economic development. Republican Congressman Bill Green of New York wants to invest the fund in public works like housing projects. Says he: "The future, albeit temporary, riches of the Social Security system offer us a genuine opportunity to deal with some pressing national needs." But critics charge that using the surplus for general governmental programs creates a demand that is hard to turn off once the need for the retirement funds is at hand...
...better strategy, says Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, would be to save the surplus and, in the process, put the U.S. back on solid financial ground. His plan: continue buying Treasury securities. If Congress were actually to balance the budget, the Government could use the Social Security surplus to buy back gradually the nation's $3 trillion debt from its domestic and foreign owners. Instead of tying up their resources in Government IOUs, investors would have to funnel their assets into private industry. This would promote economic growth. The process, says Moynihan, "will put the federal budget...
...however, lawmakers have already used the pension reserve for a far less noble cause -- to help mask a big part of the federal deficit. Since Social Security receipts count as part of the overall budget, congressional projections indicate that the deficit should gradually shrink from $150 billion in 1987 to $134 billion in 1993. Without Social Security's extra padding, however, lawmakers would be forced to admit an unpleasant reality: the deficit resulting from all other Government programs will actually grow from $170 billion in 1987 to $231 billion in 1993. Says Bosworth: "The basic budget deficit is getting worse...
Other experts worry about just the opposite possibility: that the Social Security program will push the overall budget substantially into surplus. If Government revenues far exceed spending, less money will be available for businesses and consumers. That could produce a drag on the economy or even a recession. Already, says Robert DiClemente, a senior economist at Salomon Brothers, "many people are now paying higher ((Social Security and Medicare)) payroll taxes than income taxes." The thing to do, argues Robert Myers, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration from 1947 to 1970, is to cut the payroll tax so that...