Rob Crowther is absolutely right. By the time the Trust Fund will have to start cashing its Government Obligations, it will be much too late to restructure Social Security on a sound basis. There are many reasons why people do not look at SS as an urgent issue:
1) generation X look at pensions as something far off, and in any case they expect their IRA, 401(k) and other plans to take care of their retirement;
2) the baby-boomers are much too busy with their jobs, their families and spending time on commuting to devote even a few minutes on a subject that requires a great deal of effort to understand fully;in any case they are sceptical that any Social Security will be there for them;
3) many economists and specialists as well as lobbies such as the AARP and the labor unions refuse to accept the fact that Social Security needs more than superficial (their word is "modest") changes and as a result, they contribute to the lack of urgency;
4) there is such a lack of knowledge of economics and finance among newspaper reporters and most employees that they tend to believe all the distortions and misrepresentations (intentional or not) that they read in newspapers and magazines;
5) from the start of Social Security in 1935, the jargon used to refer to SS (contributions, insurance, "Trust" Fund, etc) gives the wrong impressions as to the nature of the system.
What to do?
1) We must educate high school students, college students, employees, and of course educators themselves in order to disseminate accurate and reliable information;
2) We must exhort politicians to try to avoid the use of extrapolations, estimates, projections and irrelevant statistics intended to support their positions when they know that they are not an accurate representation of realities.
3) "The role of the citizen is to make easy for the politician to do the right thing". We must write to our representatives and ask them where they stand on this issue and tell them that we shall support them if they adopt a position that will help improve the solvency of Social Security.
