CS Monitor: Social security woes are felt worldwide

[unhappycamper]

Social security woes are felt worldwide
By David R. Francis

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0526/p17s01-cogn.html

If you think America's Social Security finances are strained, you should see Germany's. Or China's. Around the world, a major demographic tide of declining birthrates is pushing nations further and further away from the promises that they've made to seniors. As nations age, they have fewer and fewer workers to support more and more retirees.

Already, most industrial nations can't keep the promises they've made to older people under their pay-as-you-go social-security systems, say two economists, Jonathan Gruber and David Wise, in a new paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), in Cambridge, Mass.

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In most rich nations, the financing problem has been compounded by the fact that, at least until recently, workers have been retiring at earlier and earlier ages and are living longer, thereby getting pension benefits for more years.

Many of these industrial nations, in effect, pay workers to retire early. "They are penalizing work at older ages," says Mr. Gruber, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By doing so, social-security systems magnify the increased burden caused by aging populations.

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[liberal N proud]

1. The are felt world wide because they funds to support SS are

robbed from the account to pay for illegal wars.

Pay it back bu$h and then there would not be a crisis.