Government spending on the elderly is projected to increase rapidly as the American population becomes older. As a result, many policymakers and budget analysts are concerned about the continued viability of entitlement programs such as Social Security. The Social Security trustees' economic...

This paper proposes a Social Security reform for the United States that gradually, but ultimately fully, privatizes the system. This proposal follows the “no-harm, no-foul” principle in that it preserves the benefits of older generations and yet promises the same or higher retirement...

Gokhale and Smetters put forward some criticisms concerning the indicators currently used to assess the financial sustainability of the U.S. Social Security program. They argue that these indicators create a misleading impression of the program's financial outlook and are biased against...

Few realize how bad the federal government's finances are, because most evaluations are based on what happened in the past--not what is likely to happen in the future.