To the editor:

In Saturday’s Journal-World, the editor claims that no one questions or doubts that the Social Security system will go broke at some future date. I beg to disagree. Even the trustees — those responsible for forecasting the “solvency” of the trust funds — don’t make this claim. Indeed, they readily admit that they do not know what will happen. All they can do is to estimate the payment commitments and payroll tax revenues that might be forthcoming at future dates.

And since they know that they don’t know what will happen in the future, they make three projections, each based on different assumptions about what might happen to fertility rates, immigration rates, inflation rates, economic growth rates, etc., over the next 75 years! According to their most optimistic forecast (Alternative 1) the entire “crisis” disappears and Social Security is considered solvent for as far as the eye can see.

Stephanie A. Kelton,

Lawrence