please welcome eric laursen to the festival of books. [applause] >> very glad to be here again. let's start with the question raised by the title of our session here and that is the social security manufactured crisis? the short answer is yes. there is not existential crisis for social security faces in the sense it will not exist in x number of your system and drastic is done. but there's two crises only talk about a social security crisis. number one is a fiscal crisis. what have enough income and revenues from whatever source to support itself in future years on the second crisis is a political crisis and i do find that as a crisis in terms of whether, for lack of a better term, the governing class in this country wants to support social security anymore and the degree to which there is sufficient popular support, mobilize popular support that it has to continue. so i'll address the fiscal crisis for us because that is the one in the media all the time. to do find this a little more closely, social security depends on two sources of income. payroll taxes and interest income o

it's my great honor to be here today with eric larson -- eric laursen, author of "the people's pension: the struggle to defend social security." through the use of television magic, we are here with c-span on booktv, so hello from tucson, arizona. i would like to thank the city of tucson for sponsoring the station a big thanks to everyone who helped the tucson festival of books come together. we'll be talking for about an hour here in the first 40 minutes will be q&a with mr. larsen and myself and then questions from the audience. hang on to your questions until then. when they get wrapped up because southwest of the student union so he can autographed copies of this book. if you turn off your cell phones now, that would be great. let's get introductions out of the way. eric laursen is an independent financial literal activists and in addition to writing "the people's pension," he has cowritten understand the crash and is written for a wide variety of publications the village voice and the "huffington post." please