But that just makes it more important for economists to clearly explain their position. We’ll never be able to see when they’re wrong if they do the “on the one hand… on the other hand routine.” Anyone who claims to be an expert should be obliged to behave like one – with confident, clear claims. The success and failure of these will be the judge.

So, how did we get into this absurd situation? I happen to think money and power lie behind it, surprise surprise, particulary very big and bipartisan Wall Street money, which gives the whole thing the establishment aura and patina that convinces established media bloviaters to prattle on and on about what really appears to be a nonexistent “crisis,” with the “experts” arriving en masse to provide their various “solutions.”

It goes back to 1997 when Wall Streeter Robert Rubin was Treasury Secretary under Dem prez, Clinton. That person appoints the board of the Social Security Administration, its Trustees, who issue these annual reports. Wall Street firms would love to have social security privatized, at least to some extent. We are talking billions of dollars a year, here serious money. So, Rubin’s appointees came up with the projections that were crap that are still used today, “crisis!” eeeeek! etc. Of course Bush has supported privatization for ideological reasons since he first ran for Congress back in 1976, so his Treasury Secretaries have found it convenient to simply continue with what Rubin started, this bipartisan theme becoming so established that no respectable economist will publicly state what is known privately to pretty much all of them that have really looked at the subject, that these projections are pretty ridiculous, and that the probability that the system will even run a deficit anytime in the remote future is low. But it is so socially entrenched that one must say “there is a crisis” that every major economics adviser of every major Dem prez candidate agrees with this drivel, even though the Dem base does not want the system screwed with.

This is one of those cases where the supposedly dumb voters may be smarter, or at least more in tune with an honest assessment, than the supposed experts.

If you are reading this, Bryan, C., do you have any commment? (I realize, Bryan, that you do not like the social security system for ideological reasons, but that is another matter. It aint’ broke, and it don’t need no fixin’.)

Bottom line: the ‘economic consensus’ has been meaningfully wrong on the big issues for a long long time.

Yes, inflation-adjusted. Of course if wages go up less than forecast, the payments will go up less rapidly, which means the system will not “go bankrupt” as soon.

The more absurd problem is that the projections that have been made by the Social Security Administration have been wildly pessimistic. Reality has done better in the last ten years than what was projected by their supposedly “optimistic” projection. But they have not altered their projections at all in the face of this. As it is, if the current optimistic projection holds, and for that matter something considerably less good than the optimistic projection, the system never runs a deficit (the mid-range forecast has deficits appearing in 2017) and certainly never goes bankrupt. So, probably this whole discussion of bankruptcy is nonsense, although few people realize this because the media just repeats endlessly the mid-range projection as a fixed fact, even though it has totally flopped over the last ten years.

A mathematical statement that doesn’t include all necessary preconditions is simply false.
I do take your point, and I was only providing mathematicians as an example I personally knew about. But there are lots of sciences were statements without the preconditions are false (such as omitting “ignoring quantum effects” when talking about general relativity). Mathematics has axioms and theorems, science has “if these conditions hold, these are the results”. For an un-expert audience, and for someone lecturing to that audience, the difference is not significant.

In fact, in my (WARNING: ANECDOTE) experience, physicists and engineers are those most able to overcome their urge to caveat every statement. Mathematicians and economists are the worst. There’s different cultures in each discipline, and part of that culture is how to argue amongst yourself, and how to talk to non-experts.

Oh, you believe that last one, about social security? Hah! The starting payments are indexed by wages. The current mid-line forecasts that have the system “going bankrupt” in 2041 have wages then at about 170% of what they are now. The bankruptcy would entail a sudden decline to about 71% of the payments, a number widely publicized. However, very few people know that this is 71% of about 170%, which comes out to being greater than 100%.

Two years ago, three colleagues and I did a survey of our students at James Madison, about 250, most of them economics majors. They were asked in seven different classes about what they thought the payment would be if “the system goes bankrupt as forecast” as a percentage of what retirees get now. They were offered four options: zero, zero to 50%, 50-100%, and above 100% (the correct answer). A class in game theory said zero. Five of the remaining classes had majorities saying zero to 50%. One class had a majority saying 50-100% (an environmental econ class). Not one student knew the correct answer.

Anyone who wants can check out the details of the survey on my website at http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb. Look for “Student ignorance about social security.” So, I will often lecture students about their ignorance about social security, given that I know they really are massively ignorant.