Thoughts on the Social Security briefing

I was going to go through the briefing, but I see Atrios has already done so.
Atrios seems to let the "unnamed official" slide on the whole end of the world in 2018 or 2020 or whatever. Remember this date (which keeps moving back) is the reason the Reagan set up this trust fund in the first place. The official also says the Social Security will not get better on it's own. Which is mere speculation on his part. Watching the date of demarcation pushed further and further back is ample evidence of this.

The "official" also sidesteps the question of how privatization solves the Social Security problem. Because it doesn't. It's possible to have a few tweaks take care of the funding problem if it ever occurs. This is just an excuse to push the awful idea of private accounts and destroy the insurance in old age that Social Security provides.

And this was an odd comment:

For example, if we were to do projections out beyond 2015, we would have to model what were the hypothetical changes made to fix the system's finances, which are at this time yet undetermined.

So, in an effort to "save" Social Security, we can only look ahead to 2015. But when we talk about destroying it, we assume not only that 75 year projections are correct, but we can discuss a infinite horizon as well? How in the heck does that work?

Anyway, read the Atrios sum up if you haven't already. It's good.