FUTURE SHOCK

For much of the 20th century, Americans sought security in the form of guarantees from large organizations. The federal government would provide Social Security benefits for workers and their dependents. Large corporations would provide defined-benefit pension plans promising specific payments to retired employees. The assumption was that experts at the top of these big organizations could use scientifically obtained knowledge to take better care of us than we could take care of ourselves.

Now there's reason to challenge that assumption. The experts, it turns out, are fallible. The Social Security system faces rising gaps between revenues and promised benefits starting in 2017 and an exhaustion of trust fund assets in 2041. Meanwhile, large corporations -- the latest is United Airlines -- have defaulted on their defined-benefit pension plans and passed them off to the government-sponsored Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which does not pay all of the promised amounts.

The Social Security system's problems are, in large part...........Read full article here.