Social Security

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Social Security and Social Insurance
The Politics of Non-Issues
Chapter 2: Social Security and its Critics
Social Security's Finances
The Disappearing Trust Fund
Demography as Destiny
Unfunded Liabilities, Ponzi Schemes, and Other Rhetorical Devices
Chapter 3: Generating Phony Wars With Generational Accounting
How Generational Accounting Works
How Generational Accounting Cooks the Books
Discounting Our Children's Futures
Will Education Really Impoverish Our Children?
If Health Care Costs Destroy the Economy, What Will Happen to Tax Rates?
What the Recount Shows
How Will Our Children Really Fare?
Rising Incomes, Changing Demographics
The Base Case
What the Real Generational Accounts Show
Chapter 4: Entitlements for the Elderly: Medicare "Reform"
The Wrong Direction
The Wrong Incentives
Medicare and Health Care Reform
Chapter 5: The Debate Over the Consumer Price Index
What Difference Does 1.1 Percent Make?
The Boskin Arithmetic
The Evidence for an Overstated CPI
Substitution Bias
Retail Outlet Substitution Bias
Quality and New Goods Bias
Sources of Understated Inflation in the CPI
Inflation for Whom?
The Implications of an Overstated CPI
The Boskin Commission's Failed Case
Chapter 6: The Glories of Privatization
A Happy Market, an Unhappy Economy
Is There a Way to Beat 3.5 Percent?
The Returns From Privatization: Going Down From 3.5 Percent
A Modicum of Privatization
Chapter 7: The Advisory Council and Other Fixes
Three Ideas From the Advisory Council
Investing the Trust Fund
Other Regressive Cuts
Proposals for Means Testing Benefits
A Worsening Problem?
The Way to Real Reform
Chapter 8: The Debate Over National Saving
An Economist's View of Saving
How Saving Generates Investment
Finding a Recipe For Higher Saving
The Impact of Investment on Economic Growth
Saving Will Not Make Us Rich
Chapter 9: Will the Age Wave Lift All Boats?
The Basic Features of the Future
The State of the Nation's Health
The Many Homes of the Future
Benefits of the Information Boom
Opportunities in Education
The Future of Work
The Downside to the Next Century
Fix the Problems, not Social Security
Chapter 10: An Honest Debate
Appendix: The Feldstein-Samwick Plan
References