13Social Security（课件）- 《财政与金融》同步教学（人民大学·第五版）

13 13.1 What Is Social Security, and How Does It Work? 13.2 Consumption-Smoothing Benefits of Social Security 13.3 Social Security and Retirement 13.4 Social Security Reform 13.5 Conclusion Social Security 1 of 45 1 13 The aging of the huge “baby boom” cohort will lead to a large rise in the number of retired elderly relative to the number of workers. The Social Security program faces a stark financing problem: over the next 75 years, the program has promised $10.6 trillion more in benefit payments than it plans to collect in taxes from workers. During the 2011 Republican presidential debate, Governor Perry called the Social Security program a “monstrous lie” to future generations. The Social Security Debate of 45 C H A P T E R 1 3 ■ S O C I A L S E C U R I T Y 2 13 Opposing Republican candidate Mitt Romney rebutted Perry’s opposition to the status quo by saying, “You can’t say that to tens of millions of Americans who have lived on Social Security.” Perry proposed a return to how the Social Security program operated before 1983, when state and local workers were free to opt out of Social Security and instead pay into state or locally run retirement programs. Romney proposed a two-fold approach to Social Security reform that involves increasing the retirement age by a year or two as well as slowing benefit growth for higher-income recipients. The Social Security Debate of 45 C H A P T E R 1 3 ■ S O C I A L S E C U R I T Y 3 13 Perry’s opt-out policy also stands in contrast to the proposal of President Obama’s bipartisan debt-reduction commission, which would enroll all newly hired state and local government workers in Social Security after 2020. Over the past decade, little progress has been made on Social Security reform. It is the largest single source of income for the elderly population in the United States. Any reform that is perceived as reducing the generosity of the program is politically dangerous. The Social Security Debate of 45 C