Niall Ferguson Quotes

If there are healthy - and growing - numbers of people working and paying taxes, we are better able to pay the costs of people living longer.

Unless we get entitlement costs under control, Social Security will inevitably square off against national security.

We obviously have to honor the commitments that have been made to the people who are already retired or near the retirement age. But we need to tell the truth about the fact that when we set the retirement age at age 65 in America, life expectancy was only 62.

And in terms of entitlement reforms, we have to save them from themselves, because if we don't reform social security and we don't reform Medicare, they're going to actually implode.

A Congressional Budget Office report released as recent as June 2004 says the system will be able to pay full benefits until 2052, and 80 percent after that.

Demography is changing us as we are older societies, we're living longer. How the generations balance each other out, how that affects education and health care.

Raising the traditional and early retirement ages will mean extending workers' taxable earning years, fueling economic growth and putting a dent in our unfunded-liabilities crisis by delaying payouts.

The President has no real plan to address the fiscal challenges arising from the retirement of the baby boom generation, let alone a plan to fix Social Security.

Social Security and Medicare are necessary safety nets, but they are nearing insolvency as fewer pay in, more take out, and more take out more.

We have so many people retiring that we do not have enough people paying into the system to be able to provide the benefits for those collecting those benefits.

Some calamities - the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 - have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known.

Entitlement programs are on autopilot. I’m alarmed. We’re close to the danger zone.

I'd also remind people, if I were running for Presidency, that a long-term problem facing the budget is Social Security and Medicare.

The only way to save Social Security is to raise the retirement age.

Our population is headed for a stable plateau, which means an aging population.

The retirement age needs to be raised. A portion of Social Security ought to be privatized, if not all. And there probably needs to be some means testing. It's a Ponzi scheme that's not sustainable.

If the economy is strained, then Social Security, like the rest of the government, will be, too.

The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing.

In fact, entitlement spending on programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security make up 54% of federal spending, and spending is projected to double within the next decade. Medicare is growing by 9% annually, and Medicaid by 8% annually.

People over 100 are the fastest-growing group in America. People soon will be working 'til 100 - some because they have to - and living 'til 125 or even 135. What do I know, I'm just a weatherman, but I've made a hobby of studying this, and it's phenomenal.

Nobody wants to pay higher taxes. But do you want your kids to get a good education? You have to pay for that. Do you want Medicare for senior citizens? I do. We have to pay for it.

The debate around the ageing population should, in my view, focus much more on how we grow the active, working population.

Social Security has not contributed to the deficit problem.

The great increase in longevity has produced a surge in the desire to accumulate assets for retirement. It has outpaced the ability of the private sector to produce assets, so we need a larger government debt.

In the current law we're seeing Social Security dwindle. And so what we're saying is if we're going to reduce taxes we just want to make sure that there are things within the law that pay for it.