Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Why are the Administration's economic predictions gloomier when they talk about Social Security? Why, bilmore, why?
- DOES BUSH BELIEVE IN THE CRISIS? Following up on the post below and a suggestion from Nick Confessore, I thought it would be instructive to compare the Social Security Administration's economic forecasts on which the alleged "crisis" is based to the administration's own growth forecasts. The SSA says that "the average annual growth in real GDP is projected to be 2.9 percent over the short-range projection period (2004-13), a slower rate than the 3.3 percent average observed over the historical 40-year period (1962-2002)." Meanwhile the White House's Council of Economic Advisors has recently released its own economic forecasts (PDF) for the years 2004-10, concluding that we'll see an average of 3.4 percent growth for that seven-year period.
For the numbers to work out, we'd need to see an extraordinary collapse to 1.87 percent average annual GDP growth for 2011-13. Another way of putting this would be that for five out of the seven years in which their projections overlap, the administration's estimates for productivity growth are higher than those used in the SSA's intermediate forecast. If even the White House doesn't believe the SSA's short-term forecasts (i.e., the ones that are most likely to be accurate) why should the rest of us (and the press and politicians in general) be expected to take their 75-year (and even infinite horizon!) forecasts seriously?
Matt Yglesias at TAPPED.
|
Actually, this tension will only increase as the Administration also pushes its (next) tax cut plan.
The breaking point will occur when Bush has to explain his rationale while employing (and pronouncing) the term "asymptote."
Threaded Mode