单选题 Just recently the trustees of Social Security and Medicare issued their annual reports on the programs' futures. Here's one startling fact: By 2030 the projected costs of Social Security and Medicare could easily consume—via higher taxes—a third of workers' future wage and salary increases. We're mortgaging workers' future pay gains for baby boomers' retirement benefits.
This matters because Social Security and Medicare are pay-as-you-go programs. Current taxpayers pay current benefits. Future taxpayers will pay future benefits. Baby boomers' retirement benefits will come mostly from their children and grandchildren, who will be tomorrow's workers. Consequently, baby boomers' children and grandchildren face massive tax increases. Social Security and Medicare spending now equals 14 percent of wage and salary income, reports Elizabeth Bell, a research assistant to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute, Washington, D.C.. Of course, payroll taxes don't cover all the costs of Social Security and Medicare. Still, these figures provide a crude indicator of the economic burden, because costs are imposed heavily on workers via some tax, government borrowing and cuts in other government programs.
It can be argued that the costs are bearable. The wage gains in the trustees' reports could prove too pessimistic. Like all forecasts, they're subject to errors. Even if they come true, they assume that tomorrow's wages will be higher than today's. Productivity increases; wages rise. In 2030, under the trustees' "intermediate" assumptions, workers' before-tax incomes would be about a third higher than now, says Tom Saving of Texas A&M University. What's the complaint if workers lost—through steeper taxes— some of that? Why shouldn't they generously support parents and grandparents? Well, maybe they will. But there are at least two possible flaws in this logic.
The first is that, on a year-to-year basis, wage gains would be tiny—less than 1 percent. When they've gotten that low before, people have complained that they're "on a treadmill" and that the American dream has been withdrawn. Even these gains might be diluted by further tax increases to trim today's already swollen budget deficits. The second and more serious threat is that higher taxes would harm the economy. They might dull economic vitality by reducing investment and the rewards for work and risk-taking. Productivity and wage gains might be smaller than predicted. Then we'd flirt with that death spiral: We'd need still higher taxes to pay benefits, but those taxes might depress economic growth more.
One way or another, workers may get fed up with paying so much of their paychecks to support retirees, many of whom were living quite comfortably. So we ought to redefine the generational compact to lighten the burden of an aging population on workers. The needed steps are clear: to acknowledge longer life expectancies by slowly raising eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare; to limit future spending by curbing retirement benefits for the better-off; to keep people in the productive economy longer by encouraging jobs that mix "work" and "retirement".

单选题 What does the last sentence of the first paragraph probably imply?
A. Young people save from their salaries now to pay for retirement later.
B. The next generation of workers pay for the pensions of current workers.
C. Some property is given as a security for payment of money borrowed.
D. Workers will receive future compensation for a current salary reduction.

单选题 The main tax base for Social Security and Medicare is
A. retirement benefits.
B. the wage and salary.
C. government's budget.
D. trustee fund.

单选题 It can be learnt from the trustees' reports that
A. the costs of retirement programs are decreasing.
B. government's capacity to provide social security increases.
C. future income will rise at a steady but low pace.
D. fewer workers will support more retirees in the future.

单选题 The rising costs of Social Security and Medicare create a danger because
A. they make people lose faith in the American dream.
B. they might reduce economic growth.
C. they will trigger a political death spiral.
D. they will bring about an aging society.

单选题 To avoid a dismal future of the retirement programs, maybe we could
A. acknowledge generational conflicts.
B. raise the retirement age by several years.
C. impose a heavy tax on rich people.
D. encourage early full retirement.