NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT--OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price while supplies last Presents 100-year projections for Social Security under current law. Focuses on the resource demands of the Social Security system, the program's finances, and projections of the benefits received by individuals in different age and income groups. Related products: Federal Benefits & Entitlement Programs is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/health-benefits/federal-benefits-entitlement-programs

Social Security, in the United States, currently refers to the Federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. The original Social Security Act[1] and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare or social insurance programs. The larger and better known initiatives of the program are: Federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance; Unemployment Insurance; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families; Health Insurance for Aged and Disabled (Medicare); Grants to States for Medical Assistance Programs (Medicaid); State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP); Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Social Security in the United States is a social insurance program funded through dedicated payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). The term, in everyday speech, is used only to refer to the benefits for retirement, disability, survivorship, and death, which are the four main benefits provided by traditional private-sector pension plans. By dollars paid, the U.S. Social Security program is the largest government program in the world. Largely because of solvency questions ranging from immediate crisis to large projected future shortfalls, reform of the Social Security system has been a major political issue for more than three decades. This book presents the latest issues and developments related to this program.

This work puts debates about Social Security reform into historical perspective, considers various reform ideas, and elaborates a proposal to ensure that the system can continue to meet the claims of the retired and the disabled. It sets out a plan to change the way Social Security is financed.

New in Paperback. While everyone agrees that Social Security is a vital and necessary government program, there have been widely divergent plans for reforming it. Peter A. Diamond and Peter R. Orszag, two of the nation's foremost economists, propose a reform plan that would rescue the program both from its projected financial problems and from those who would destroy the program in order to save it. Since the publication of the first edition of this book in 2004, the Social Security debate has moved to the center of the domestic policy agenda. In this updated edition of Saving Social Security, the authors analyze the Bush Administration's proposal for individual accounts and discuss the so-called "price indexing" proposal to restore long-term solvency through changing how initial benefits would be calculated. Soc ial Security is essis essential reading for policymakers involved in reform, analysts, students, and all those interested in the fate of this safeguard of American lives. "An honest, transparent and comprehensive approach to making the much needed reforms to the Social Security program."—Journal of Pensions, Economics, and Finance "Very accessible presentation of facts, analysis of underlying problems, comparison of opinions, and argument for proposed reforms."—Future Survey Exhaustively researched and deeply entrenched in practical issues and mathematical calculations... a highly recommended ray of hope against a looming national crisis." —Wisconsin Bookwatch "Diamond and Orszag bring some welcome realism and decency to the debate."—Robert M. Solow, Institute Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nobel Laureate in Economics

The rancorous debate over the future of Social Security reached a fever pitch in 2005 when President Bush unsuccessfully proposed a plan for private retirement accounts. Although efforts to reform Social Security seem to have reached an impasse, the long-term problem—the projected Social Security deficit—remains. In Pension Puzzles, sociologists Melissa Hardy and Lawrence Hazelrigg explain for a general audience the fiscal challenges facing Social Security and explore the larger political context of the Social Security debate. Pension Puzzles cuts through the sloganeering of politicians in both parties, presenting Social Security's technical problems evenhandedly and showing how the Social Security debate is one piece of a larger political struggle. Hardy and Hazelrigg strip away the ideological baggage to explicate the basic terms and concepts needed to understand the predicament of Social Security. They compare the cases for privatizing Social Security and for preserving the program in its current form with adjustments to taxes and benefits, and they examine the different economic projections assumed by proponents of each approach. In pursuit of its privatization agenda, Hardy and Hazelrigg argue, the Bush administration has misled the public on an issue that was already widely misunderstood. The authors show how privatization proponents have relied on dubious assumptions about future rates of return to stock market investments and about the average citizen's ability to make informed investment decisions. In addition, the administration has painted the real but manageable shortfalls in Social Security revenue as a fiscal crisis. Projections of Social Security revenues and benefits by the Social Security Administration have treated revenues as fixed, when in fact they are determined by choices made by Congress. Ultimately, as Hardy and Hazelrigg point out, the clash over Social Security is about more than technical fiscal issues: it is part of the larger culture wars and the ideological struggle over what kind of social responsibilities and rights American citizens should have. This rancorous partisan wrangling, the alarmist talk about a "crisis" in Social Security, and the outright deception employed in this debate have all undermined the trust between citizens and government that is needed to restore the solvency of Social Security for future generations of retirees. Drawing together economic analyses, public opinion data, and historical narratives, Pension Puzzles is a lucid and engaging guide to the major proposals for Social Security reform. It is also an insightful exploration of what that debate reveals about American political culture in the twenty-first century. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology

In this book Rita Ricardo Campbell translates the arcane intricacies of Social Security into terms intelligible to lay readers. She thereby fills the long-standing need for a lucid, up-to-date, authoritative guide to the system. She not only examines the gulf between how the sytem ideally should work and how it actually does work, but also offers incisive, realistic proposals for overdue reforms. Social Security is a subject no one can afford to ignore or fail to understand. At its inception the maximum tax per person was $60 per year; today its almost $2,000. Thirty-two million individuals currently receive benefits, and 90 percent of the workforce pays Social Security taxes; nearly one-half pay more in social security than in federal income tax. For those who seek an intelligent analysis of Social Security Campbell's book will be welcome and invaluable.