* Gary Denton ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Of course, the current GOP appointed trustees have slanted this last > report to make the situation more dire. If you go back to the last > report in 1997 the optimist case had the economy growing atr 2.2% a > year. The new optimistic scenario is a growth of 1.7%. If you plug > the 2.2% number back in under the SS numbers there is no deficit. > Could these numbers have been chosen for political reasons? Did they > not want any case shown where there is not a shortfall?
Rather than making silly partisan insinuations, and rapidly quoting sound-bites without studying and thinking about them, it is useful to actually look at facts and numbers. Since 1789, real GDP per capita in the US has grown at an average annualized rate of 1.64%, with a standard deviation of 5.02%. For a seventy five year period, the standard deviation is reduced by the square root of 75, which comes out to be 0.58%. Source data for GDP is at: http://www.eh.net/hmit/gdp/ The SS Trustees assume for their intermediate productivity growth number 1.6%, exactly equal to the longer term growth in GDP per capita for the longest time series available. And for their high and low cost scenarios, they add and subtract half of the 75 year standard deviation, so that is 1.6% +/- 0.29% = 1.3% and 1.9% The SS projection assumptions are at: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/II_assump.html#wp94905 It is hard to imagine anyone familiar with economic statistics calling their assumed productivity growth numbers unjustified or unreasonable. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
