Fifteen years ago, the consensus was that America's Social Security System was in huge trouble, that it needed the equivalent of an engine rebuild. Today its problems look, as the Brookings Institution economist Peter Orszag says, much more like the equivalent of a slow tire leak: you have to fix it eventually, but it isn’t very hard to do and repair it isn’t terribly urgent.
社会保障体系的精算师们可能并没有完全认识到如今技术革命带来的冲击力，而是显而易见地继续推进了这一政府能够负担得起的体制的规模。十五年前，大多数人认为：美国的社会保障体制存在严重问题，解决它相当于重建一台机车。而现在解决这个问题看起来，就像布鲁金学院经济学家彼得·奥斯杰葛说的那样，更像修理一个漏气的轮胎：最终你必须要修好它，但这并不难而且不那么棘手。