Re: Social Security

[maru dubshinki]

I was talking about the survivorship bias Erik, which simply says our 
extrapolations from past performance have a small, but nonetheless real 
chance, of being in error because of the historically advantageous 
position of our country means that it will have higher performance, and 
the data from which to extrapolate, whereas the less fortunate countries 
will do poorly, and also not have the records that would allow us to 
integrate their true economic data into our estimates, leading to a 
over-optimism, an inadvertent cherry picking if you will .
 Which means, it could be so that one of our many wars will destroy, 
significantly reduce our financial centers and our economy, and the 
chances of this is underestimated.
 Its relevance to this debate is such: imagine Germany c. 1899 or so, 
had engaged in 75-year or infinite horizon forcasts of *their* 
productivity growth rate and its applicabilility to their own social 
security style program Bismarck set up.  They fell afoul of the 
survivorship from bias.
I said, nor implied, nothing about the US 'cease to exist..'. Except 
maybe hypothetically in a corporate legal sorta way.

~Maru
Selection bias effects, yay!
Erik Reuter wrote:
* maru dubshinki ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

Hmm... Reasonable yes. But, isn't that assuming that the survivorship
bias continues to favor the US?  For a 75 year, or infinite horizon
projection, the chances that it won't can't be neglected.

Your argument is that since the US could cease to exist in the future,
then we should adjust our estimate of productivity growth....how?
--
Erik Reuter   http://www.erikreuter.net/
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