{"id":2049,"date":"2006-10-31T21:34:04","date_gmt":"2006-11-01T02:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2006\/10\/31\/us-should-study-swedish-and-german-social-security-reforms\/"},"modified":"2006-11-02T13:39:33","modified_gmt":"2006-11-02T18:39:33","slug":"us-should-study-swedish-and-german-social-security-reforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2006\/10\/us-should-study-swedish-and-german-social-security-reforms\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Should Study Swedish &#038; German Social Security Reforms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eppc.org\/publications\/pubID.2732\/pub_detail.asp\">Ethics and Public Policy Center<\/a> James C. Capretta October 24, 2006 <\/p>\n<p>In recent weeks, both President Bush and new Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen have made it clear they are planning another effort to rein in future spending on the highly popular, but expensive, federal entitlement programs:  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>[ &#8230; ]<\/p>\n<p>The unprecedented aging of the U.S. population will put tremendous pressure on the federal budget.  According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), between 2010 and 2030, spending on the big three entitlements will go from 9.2 percent to 15.2 percent of GDP using intermediate assumptions &#8212; a 6 percentage point increase in just 20 years.  <\/p>\n<p>Bush&#8217;s attempt in 2005 to start the entitlement reform process with Social Security showed just how steep the hill is for would-be reformers.  It is no accident that Social Security hasn&#8217;t changed in any significant way in more than two decades.  With no imminent crisis, U.S. politicians have found it relatively easy to delay the tough decisions on entitlements even as the budget crunch draws near.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not the case for most of Europe&#8217;s state pension programs.  With plummeting birth rates, rapidly aging populations, and expensive benefit formulas, governments throughout Europe have been forced to act &#8212; some more decisively than others &#8212; to head off the financial train wrecks that were, and in some cases still are, already upon them.<\/p>\n<p><!--adsense--><\/p>\n<p>. . . <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eppc.org\/publications\/pubID.2732\/pub_detail.asp\">more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ethics and Public Policy Center James C. Capretta October 24, 2006 In recent weeks, both President Bush and new Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen have made it clear they are planning another effort to rein in future spending on the highly popular, but expensive, federal entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}