The latest issue of AARP’s monthly publication, The Bulletin, announces that it’s time for another try at strengthening Social Security, and lists eight possible ways – raise taxes, raise the retirement age, lower annual increases, etc. – to achieve it. One proposal it could have made was for the nation to keep improving productivity.

You don’t hear much about Social Security these days, in part because politicians, like the rest of us, have a limited capacity for crises; one disaster can push another off the front page or cut it from a newscast entirely. But it wasn’t long ago that the looming crisis of Social Security was going to devour the next generation of older Americans and run up huge federal deficits. Privatization of this program was all that stood between a vulnerable population and doom.

Doomsday now seems to be further off, and as several commentators have recently pointed out, continued growth of productivity beyond what the Social Security Administration had assumed under its middle of three scenarios could stretch the trust fund out decades further.

When the 2007 Economic Report of the President came out last winter, several economists pounced on a seeming fix for Social Security that had nothing to do with raising taxes or lowering payments. They noted that over the previous five years, productivity had grown 3.4 percent, and at 2.7 percent between 1995 and 2000, according to US News & World Report. Social Security administrators have based their predictions about the end of the trust fund and reductions in the ability of the retirement system to meet payments starting in 2041 on growth of 1.7 percent. But were long-term growth to average 3 percent, the system would be stable for at least the next 75 years.

Positive thinking about economic growth is an inadequate plan for protecting Social Security, but the numbers strongly reinforce the idea that the system is not in crisis and doesn’t need to be dismantled through privatization to survive. Some mild combination of the suggestions from AARP, along with average growth that exceeds the 1.7 percent predicted by Social Security administrators, may be all that’s required to keep the system healthy for many decades.

For those who worry whenever Washington prepares to fix a major program, the calm may be the best news possible.