For those that want a prettier graphical view of Social Security's outlook, here is social security's surplus/deficit. Historical since 1970, 2005 projections through 2050, as a percentage of taxable payroll:
Note that we have gone into deficit before, for a many-year period.
Here is the trust fund ratio - assets over expenditures, same time range.
It clearly shows we've drawn from the trust fund successfully in the past, and it worked fine.
That's an interesting dip they've projected from 2004 to 2005 in the most recent Trustee Report.
These graphs are generated dynamically from data I've collected from the SSA Trustee reports. Clicking on the graphs will take you to the site that wrote the base software package. I've written scripts to get parts of the data, but there are plenty of more possible graphs to draw - the "High Cost" or "Low Cost" assumptions, different year ranges, prior year projections, etc. For instance, here is the current projection of the deficit date, compared to projections in some prior years, zoomed to 1996-2020.
Note that the projected date will improve significantly as soon as we begin our next recession. Whaa...?
I'm working on a tool to allow people to select data sources and generate their own graphs through a web form. These are flash files, so you can't copy the images. But you can link to this blog entry, or you can crop screenshots. Watch Politology for more features.
Posted by tunesmith at March 29, 2005 02:16 AM
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