From Peter Reagan
We’ve been reporting on the likelihood that Social Security will suffer from a series of setbacks in the 2030s for quite some time.
Now, the Social Security Trustees are beginning to confirm the fears we’ve expressed since 2019. In this year’s report, they summarized the main problem:
Social Security and Medicare both face long-term financing shortfalls under currently scheduled benefits and financing. Costs of both programs will grow faster than gross domestic product (GDP) through the mid-2030s primarily due to the rapid aging of the U.S. population. Medicare costs will continue to grow faster than GDP through the late 2070s due to projected increases in the volume and intensity of services provided. [emphasis added]
Heading into 2023, just a few years shy of 2030, it doesn’t seem like lawmakers are making much progress toward a solution. With the politically charged “debt ceiling” nearing, some proposed solutions have already been shot down by President Biden.
This CNBC report provides the necessary context on what is the first of two major worries that Americans saving for retirement should consider:
Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida has called for sunsetting federal programs every five years so Congress can reevaluate them. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has called for moving Social Security to the federal discretionary budget, which would require reauthorizing the program’s spending every year.
The Republican Study Committee’s 2023 budget also calls for some big changes, such as raising the retirement age to 70 and requiring 40 years of work.
But the worry is President Biden will prevent further consideration of these ideas, which was confirmed by his emphatic response during a recent press conference:
Under no circumstances will I support the proposal put forward by Sen. Johnson and the senator from down in Florida to cut or make fundamental changes in Social Security and Medicare.
Biden’s immediate dismissal of any “fundamental changes” to Social Security is alarming, because changes like that are exactly what would be needed to keep the program healthy as we approach the 2034 deadline.
Which brings us to our next big worry…
COLA draining the Social Security trust fund faster than ever
This year’s Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), which is intended to keep up with inflation (but usually doesn’t), was 5.9%. The COLA for next year will be 8.7%, which is the highest in 40 years.
With the future of Social Security in question, such a high increase in the COLA could potentially drain the benefits fund even faster. How much faster remains to be seen, but according to the U.S. News, there may be a ray of hope:
the cost of the Social Security COLA will be at least partially offset by higher taxes on workers contributing to the program. The maximum amount of earnings subject to the 6.2% Social Security tax will increase from $147,000 in 2022 to $160,200 in 2023.
Of course, if the increase in COLA is only “partially” offset, then the fund will still be drained at a faster rate.
Couple that with the rather “tired” solutions that tend to get promoted to resolve the fund’s potential shortage in 2034, like a higher income cap on contributions or an older full retirement age … and you simply “kick the can down the road.”
That doesn’t mean the problem is easy to solve, by any means. But the two big worries presented in this article make solving the problem even harder.
A centuries-old solution to Social Security problems
At this point you might ask yourself: “How can I prepare for retirement when Social Security benefits are at risk of being cut?”
One answer would be to consider the following: Although we can no longer rely on Social Security benefits in our future, there is an asset class that’s been around for over 2,000 years and will likely still be valued centuries in the future.
That asset class is known as physical precious metals. Gold and silver are the two most popular types of this asset.
Both have also proven to be safe haven assets that can preserve buying power and may even increase in value during economic turmoil.
Wondering why you should include precious metals in your savings? Check the link for a discussion.
Wondering why you already haven’t diversified with precious metals? Learn more with our free info kit that explains the benefits of physical precious metals, and tells you exactly how to get started.
After 8 long years of ultra-loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve, it’s no secret that inflation is primed to soar. If your IRA or 401(k) is exposed to this threat, it’s critical to act now! That’s why thousands of Americans are moving their retirement into a Gold IRA. Learn how you can too with a free info kit on gold from Birch Gold Group. It reveals the little-known IRS Tax Law to move your IRA or 401(k) into gold. Click here to get your free Info Kit on Gold.
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My Econ 101 professor told the class in 1972 that SS was a Ponzi scheme and we would probably never seen a penny in benefits. They tweaked it some and I have been drawing from my contributions for a few years.
Most of the “trust fund” money was spent as it was received and now that fund contains nothing but Special T-bills which CONgress has to redeem to pay current recipients, driving the country further and further in debt.
I really needed the money SS and Welfare took from me when I was young and supporting a family. If you and I had been able to invest just the money the SS took from us, we would be filthy rich now. Sadly, we were forced to fund the Welfare Brats that are now out voting us.
Yep. Uncle Sugar fucked us real good, didn’t he? That’s been my main complaint of the last 40 years.
We could have been rich beyond the dreams of avarice if not for the thumb on the scale.
If you look yourself up on the SS website it tells you your and your employer’s contributions. I’ve been collecting for 7 years and converting it into silver and cash. So far clawed back about 25% of what they took. Won’t live long enough to get it all back and the compound interest lost will never be recovered.
Imagine if they had set up an account in your name that included yours and your employers contribution in your name went into for your 40+ years of work and paid a meager 4% compounding Interest in investments how much money you would have when retiring. I started paying Social Security at 15 and ended at 63, 48 years of paying in.
Back then, no Medicare Contribution & SS Rate was 1% on the 1st $12-13K or so of income.
Honest Econ. professors are as rare as hen’s teeth these days. Be glad you found one!
In the early 70’s, most of my professors were knowledgeable in their subjects and most of them had a lot of common sense. As a freshman, I had a couple of young phd’s that were nothing but book nerds that could do nothing other than lecture us on all that they “knew”.
When I applied at 66, the Tallahassee SS office had 3 young Black women with children applying for SS Handicapped benefits for their children for every one grey haired person. Black women collect Disability SS for their Physically Handicapped, Mentally Handicapped, and Behavior Handicapped Black Children; that is Racial Welfare and that is one of the ways democrats are draining the Seniors Social Security Fund and over taxing workers. I did not see one White or Asian woman there with children.
Yes, when I was a social worker in the ’70s, they were putting lots of kids on SSI and other SS scams…I’m sure that continued..
I know what you mean, but there is no “fund” .
There is a “trust fund”, but it only contains IOU’s.
there are far more whites drawing both ss & ss disability than there are whites –% wise there are more blacks drawing benes but blacks are only 12% of the population so they do not as a group receive that much —
Might be time to re-visit this….
Total US debt is at $90 trillion. US unfunded liabilities are at $169 trillion. Combined that’s $778,000 per US citizen or $2,067,000 per US tax payer 🤯
Remember, the only way the US Government can operate now is by printing more money. Which means hyperinflation is inevitable…
The value of all US assets combined, every piece of land, real estate, all savings, all companies, everything that all citizens, businesses, entities and the state own is worth $193 trillion.
So even if the US could sell all assets at the current value, which is impossible, it would still be broke.
You probably wonder why are things still going? Why didn’t everything collapse yet.
The reason why the US zombie keeps going is because the end of the US is the end of western prosperity and an admission that the current system failed as a model for the world. It doesn’t change the reality. The collapse is inevitable and coming.
What are our leaders planning?
There is NO SS fund…it’s all an appropriation….
See: South Park episode, Bass To Mouth for a great visual of what’s been done to us.
Don’t worry. We’ll all get our “money”. Eggs are now $4-5/dozen. They’ll be $10 soon – and rising. Voila’.
Paying $6/doz Canadian for chicken eggs from the hobby farm near me, in BC. $7 for duck eggs. Expensive but worth it. They have doubled in the last 4 years.
Walmart near here wants $3.50-4.50, but they are near tasteless and closer to beige yolk than yellow.
Time for a few Icelandic hens and a roster?
Two days ago I paid $2.90 for a flat of 30 eggs here in Ecuador.
You all forget what the magic zionist Greenspan said. Oh you will get your money, we just don’t know what it will buy by then. We will all get our 1500.00 dollars a month, it just might not cover the cable bill.
Another thing stupid white people. The free shit army is winning. Get on the train and get it while it lasts. Use it to buy guns, food supplies. Working hard for a living is stupid today. Take the free shit before it all blows up and it will. I was a Electrical Engineer with 2 Master’s degrees and I make far more now milking the system. Is it right. Hell no, It is what it is. I really wish it was not so, but it is. Use it to make your preps and plan for the hard road ahead.
“Is it right.”,sure,till you get back what was stolen from you.
I did not “earn” what me mum left to me in will,that said,the state and fed certainly did not “earn” the 120 thousand they stole from me mums estate,will set funds in trusts if time and be a “milker”,fuck em!
Me mum thru the years had some charities she liked and trusted,they got some of her estate,that said,neither of her charities was state/fed govt.!
Sorry, I don’t believe you. An Electrical Engineer MS degree has a pretty high earning potential. You’d need a lot of free shit to match that income.
Where is AlGore’s “Lockbox” these days?
When has Biden ever really worked in his entire life? Not to mention fixing illegal immigration or visiting the border?
doug,
do you understand how impolite it is to point out things like that?
didn’t your mother teach you any manners?
Tax-eaters do not work.
articles like this leave me feeling sad but validated —
years ago i ran 4 congress & was considered crazy –why was i called crazy & radical?
for 1 thing i wanted to privatize ss–everyone knew this was coming but denied it —
school shootings were starting to occur more frequently so when asked what to do about it i said arm the teachers –
liberals were spouting blood from their eyeballs over that one but after the ft lauderdale school shooting in 2017,the legislature overwhelmingly approved arming teachers during the 2018 legislative session —
cutting govt spending & privatizing or abolishing fed. agencies was a major part of my campaign –guess what agency i had at the top of my list to abolish? the food & drug administration,or fda —
the fda underlies all the ineptness & evil going on w/vaccines,esp covid shots –b4 a vaccine can be administered it has to have approval from the fda —
imagine that a private agency that is required to be bonded was in charge of vax approval?would the clotshot have ever been approved?
it is hard not to walk around w/a shirt that says i told you so,now kiss my ass —
As has been said before….they always talk about SS running out of money, yet NEVER talk about welfare running out of money….but SS was actually funded by the recipients, while welfare…..
I would love to know who these employers are that hire 70 year olds? Age discrimination starts at 40.
Gee. Looks like they will have to come up with some way to lighten the burden. Get rid of the ‘old’ drains on the System.
Maybe some type of aerosolized ‘Treat’ment that works? Better? Along with some preemptive methodology to nip it in the bud.
They printed $5 trillion for covid relief, and another $4 trillion for green energy projects, so why can’t they just print $9 trillion for Social Security? The government hates old people?
When the government started this Ponzi scheme, and then stole all the funds replacing them with worthless government IOU’s, they knew a day of reckoning would come but did it anyway. They also let farmers, teachers, and immigrants both legal and illegal into the program with very limited times of contributions, and then also made it a disability program. Vote buying, corruption, theft and stupidly by politicians is what has broke Social Security. Now the politicians want to whine, work people until their deaths, and act like it is the peoples fault.
The question/s rhetorical that don’t often get asked, a la the elephant in the room, are about the “largesse” oblige, “paid” as a bit of skim off the booty (means “stolen”)
~ tho not even really that, in the direct way so many reflex, since any dollars the crooks desire to “spend” are mere contrivances punched into computer keyboards, which is to say the counterfeit sea is infinitely deep & wide (until, “all at once” reality sun comes near & boils it all away) ~
to all those hands-out “recipients” having an out of percipience experience.
Reframe the faces & the names & the scale. See the *Zappayday that is the future you “chose.”
If Bernie Madoff were exposed (just as “social security” is exposed, has always been exposed – to any with honest eyes to see), but, instead of trial & conviction & whatever restitution to his victims possible, all those victims clamored for “the right” to continue to “collect returns on what they “paid in,” & then, because goose-gander, all those stolen from to “pay” the first cohort of clamorers clamored in sing-song that *they* “deserved” to “be paid” as well, well ….
What would you do with all those #metooreparations all the way down types?
Sins of the fathers aren’t heritable because of the reading of the will.
That multitude of sins is heritable because for every Buddha who spurns “his birthright” there’s a billion that grab all the bits of booty off the old block offered, with many of those finagling for whatever more graft & theft they can get their hands on, too.
So, again, “reading of the will” is a convenient misreading of the will. Control is an illusion. “Free will” is just another free lunch, which even all those fathers’ sons know ain’t free at all. But they’ll never admit it.
The Ponzi model of business is parasitism. Ponzi players start out as masochist frogs, until its their turn to become scorpion sadists. “Neither” creature would choose either “lifestyle” if choosing was a choice.
Slaves would not become slavers, either
Some agreed that cartels are shit. That cartel denizens are shit. The “great resignation” of sinking ship rats piece the other day … the rat species that calls itself “healthcare professional.”
Well, friends, romans, countrymen, lend yourself your ears: Countries are cartels.
And the one cartel “business model” is Ponzi.
Wash the shit from your hear-holes.
Or don’t.
Them as must do, the rest, a far greater percentage, can’t, & won’t.
* The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater. ~ Frank Zappa (killed, by “the healthcare professionals”)
I saw Emily the Criminal recently. Enjoyed it. Aubrey Plaza, I’d never seen, heard of before, did a good job.
She plays an art school drop out, due to circumstances, incl a felony assault charge against an abusive boyfriend. $70k in student loans. Working IC in a catering restaurant, delivering setting up breaking down lunches. Making loan payments. Trying to get more gainfully employed. Being paper-chase fucked-with by leering voyeurs doing the vicarious, or by other sharks (the Gina Gershon character – that mouth, is she ever not shark-looking?). She is struggling mightily & there is no end in sight.
Another in the kitchen gig, by way of a thanks for her pinch-hitting his shift, gives her a number to call that leads to a “dummy shopper” gig. Stolen credit card numbers imprinted into new blank cards, corroborating DL id. A quick $200 cash for her if she commits CC fraud to buy a flat screen that the gang turns around & flips for cash. And she does it & it proceeds from there.
Early on the antihero’s rationale is not hard to find. Not from her perspective. And not from the viewers’ ~ likely ~ either.
Usurious system in general. Usurious CC companies in this particular. Fuck ‘em, right? Take everything that you can from those rotten bastards.
(Same story line in Hell or High Water. Bank is foreclosing on family property ~ that oil has been discovered on, to boot ~ so rob that bank’s branches & pay off the loan, before they can foreclose, with the bank’s own money.)
V objected that what was done to him was monstrous. Evie responded yes – & you became a monster in turn.
Jordan Peterson rx’s be/come a monster – but learn to control it.
Nietzsche wrote “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
Joining isn’t fighting (let alone beating). Joining only perpetuates what is joined.
Even Emily’s credit card fraud is a join. And it is a vote for what is.
That the system, fraudulent as fuck, tricked her, is also permission – & approval by the FAF system – for her to become FAF, too. Gotcha’. Now everybodys’ hustle can just keep going. Weus is all in it together.
Joiners, voters, etc, got no complaints or criticisms that count.
The only diagnosis that counts, because its true, is fight club. Schizophrenia. Let ‘em eat cake, & have it, too. Is enemy-is-us Pogo the pouch-drunk marsupial.
Only other solution that counts, besides do not join/become the thing, the borg, is: return every cent that was taken. Plus every bit of the inflation. Plus interest. Plus punitive damages for opportunity costs. Convict the architects & every single underling, too. Dig up Milton Friedman’s bones, the rest too, put them into a permanent holocaust display, bring school kids on field trips to see. Shut the whole thing down. Shoot dead anyone that suggests resurrection ever again (Robocop tech for the good) – make it a real, fatal, 3rd rail.
How many would say/do “solve it”? 4% max. 23.5:1.
That’s this species, how it breaks down. Most of it is not worth defending.*
And being John Donne “involved in mankind” is a pedestalized apology for reverse discrimination by the indiscriminate. Hobbes’s “concern” is the same hollow horse.
It tolls for thee, Pogo, as you clapper your own empty head, over & over ∞.
*And yes, that does “elites”-translate that most of this species is worth offending against. They do want the domesticatedead really dead, not just shamble-walking dead.
1.) They told you it was.
2.) They’re liars.
I got lots more, but the limit was set at 2.