My program has been verified by several different organizations. Dr. Randall Pozdena wrote a report on opting out of Social Security and the cost to do so. This report was compiled with the help of another person and is the bassi for the Oregon-Opt Out proposal. In it he has several tables showing what the phase out tax would be based on age. I wrote my program in 1975 and over the years updated it as Social Security released more information. It so happens I decided to compare a few of his numbers (phase out tax based on age) and found his differed from mine by less than 1% for most every date. I found this truly amazing two different people, working independently came up with basically identical results for the same objective.
Another confirmation is the accuracy of which my program has held steady all these years. Unlike Social Security's date of 2070, mine never was over 2040 and never under 2030. OASI and DI combined now are projected by Social Security to go broke in 2034. My program, without DI, shows it to be 2036 to 2037. This again is pretty close considering my program came up with this date in 1987 after US treasury rates stabilized some what. Yes I can move the date by making some different assumptions, however, I do not change the assumptions until something breath taking happens such as an increase in age, OASI tax, taxation of benefit, etc.
As for the increased life expectancy past age 65, I have read just about everything I can on the subject. Most now believe the life expectancy stated for yeas before 1950 are wrong for those over 65. There are several reasons why researches believe this to be the case. Many have found inaccurate and incomplete birth and death records for those before 1950. I have never seen a difference of greater than four yeas between 1940 and 1994 and now you say you have seen six years more for males and more for females. As an engineer I work with lots of numbers and my speciality is solving very difficult problems no one else wants. I like mathematical puzzles.
Why should I ask the actuaries at Social Security? They have never answered any of my questions in 25 years. I wonder why this is? This is not rocket science and it does not even come close to nuclear physics. It is straightforward math, but lots of it.
The original tax rate of 2% was mathematically wrong, it should have been 13.3% Did an actuary come up with this tax rate?
The original plan should have allowed for indexing the base, but apparently no actuary convinced them otherwise.
The actuaries in 1970 projected a Trillion dollar fund by the year 2000. This lead to congress basically giving the fund away in 70, 71, 72 and 73.
Then the actuaries allowed COLA to be implemented.
Then in 1983 Greenspan headed a commission to save Social Security till 2075. I guess we now know they will miss the mark there. Another good piece of actuary input.
>From what I can see the math is basic and straight forward, why should I ask an actuary to show me how to add 2 + 2? I use the same data on population projections, the same OASI formula, the same average wage as reported by Social Security, etc. How many variable are there? Inflation, wage growth, workers, retirees, OASI tax rate, OASI formula, OASI bend points, of which many are dependent variables. Makes for a simple analysis, but billions of calculations to do it right.
