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Social Security reform paranoia seems to be the flavor of the month. Here's a new Harris Poll, reports that "Social Security reform to ensure the Social Security fund has enough money to provide benefits for all Americans for the next 50 years" has the support of 88% of Americans (68% strongly). Sure, well why not? The problem is in the choice of "50 years"? Why 50? Why not forever, or why not the 75 years normally quoted as the definition of actuarial soundness? Actually, when you pick any number of years other than forever you have a conceptual problem. That's because the system is solvent today in the sense that its tax intake is sufficient to cover its benefit outflow. But the more years in the future you look at, the worse it gets, as gradually benefits start to overtake tax revenues. So even today, with no reform, 50 years looks better than the usual 75 years. Okay, so why would the Harris pollsters ask people about the relatively rosy (but still problematic) 50-year horizon, instead of the relatively dark (in fact, very problematic) 75-year horizon that is the standard way of looking at it? Could Harris have been tipped by Democratic staffers? Could this be a "trial balloon" floated by Democrats to try to legislate away the optics of the problem by instructing the Social Security actuaries to start thinking in terms of 50 instead of 75 years? A friend with the right connections tells me he asked the Harris people, and they claim the choice of 50 was entirely arbitrary... but you can't be too careful nowadays.

The reality is that both 50 years and 75 years look horrible. Benefit payments exceed tax intake after 2017, and from that point on the system has to redeem the "assets" of the so-called "trust fund" -- assets that are, in fact, just government debt owed to itself, without any actual wealth being stored to back eventual repayment. Hey, that gives me an idea. Let's pass a law mandating examining solvency on a 10-year basis. That will solve all our problems!

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