Social Security Is A-OK?

For as long as I can remember, or at least since the early 90s, the conventional wisdom was that the baby boomer retirement (which has begun) would bankrupt social security and leave the rest of us up work-till-you-die creek.

Now all the progressives are coming out to say, "chill out, everything's cool." It's like living in a parallel universe.

Yesterday, Kevin Drum posted this:

SOCIAL SECURITY FOR DUMMIES....Robert Ball, the grand old man of Social Security, explains patiently to the Washington Post editorial board yet again that Social Security is (a) a rather modest program, (b) more necessary than ever in an era of shrinking private pensions, (c) shouldn't be cut, (d) has only minor long-term financial problems, and (e) can be fixed with a small number of fairly trivial revenue changes a decade or two down the road.

I know, I know, it's a boring subject. But the number of people who either don't understand (or pretend not to understand) just how insignificant Social Security's problems are and how easily they can be repaired is really staggering. A decade ago I used to be one of them, but all it took was a very modest amount of reading on the subject to convince me that I was off base. Considering how simple the math is, I really don't understand why so many otherwise bright people continue to be fooled by all this.

And today Paul Krugman posts this about Obama's supposed Social Security misstep:

As a policy matter, I don’t understand why Obama would choose to make a big deal of the small Social Security funding shortfall — which may not even exist.

As a political matter, I don’t understand why he would essentially try to undermine the first big victory progressives won against the Bush administration and the rightward tilt of the Beltway consensus.

This isn’t 1992. The DLC isn’t the Democratic party’s leading edge. The center isn’t somewhere between Joe Lieberman and Jon McCain. I can’t understand how Obama can be this out of touch.

This is all actually good news if it's true. But when did the Conventional Wisdom change? And can the entire scare really have been a Republican conspiracy to kill a program they see as linked to dirty, dirty commies?

The truth is that we will undoubtedly see Social Security expanded over the next 20 to 30 years to supplement failed pensions, and the failure of most folks to plan ahead. People who receive social security benefits are a much stronger voting block traditionally, and the boomers will undoubtedly reshape society to serve their retirement and long term health needs.