Posted on 06/04/2026 9:08:41 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Social Security’s finances may be in worse shape than thought.
The Social Security Trustees — who release a report each year on the health of the program that supports about 70 million retirees and people with disabilities — have been relying on overly optimistic forecasts for future fertility rates, according to a blog report from the Cato Institute.
Those forecasts are at odds with projections from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — the nonpartisan federal agency that provides Congress with independent analysis of budgetary and economic issues — which both have much more sober forecasts for fertility rates.
Fertility rates and longevity are important to the finances of Social Security. Under a “pay-as-you-go” system like Social Security, taxes from current workers pay the benefits of current retirees. As fewer young people enter the labor force, there are fewer active taxpayers to support each beneficiary at a time when people are living longer — and taking benefits for longer.
“The Trustees are likely understating Social Security’s insolvency problem by assuming Americans will start having far more children than current trends suggest,” according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
“Optimistic population assumptions translate into optimistic financial projections. In a pay-as-you-go system like Social Security, higher assumed fertility means more future workers paying taxes to finance benefits and thus a smaller projected shortfall,” the Cato blog report said.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
It’s not the fault of people on Social Security. My mother was getting $15,000 a year on Social Security benefits. I don’t know how she survived.
We vote for politicans to keep Social Security so yes, it's our fault.
Actually I think that SS will be reasonably ok if we stop the politicians, bureaucrats, and invaders from stealing from USGOV
Strengthening Social Security for Future Generations
George W. Bush proposed to reform Social Security way back in 2005.
Ah, so there isn't a trust fund or a lock box or a reserve or an investment account. It always was a ponzi scheme - Bernie Madoff would be proud.
You can blame the Boomers.
Elected politicians are really screwing over the younger generations and leaving them with a huge unpayable debt.
Social Security is just a flawed system run by a do-nothing Congress. Its a mandatory worker requirement...you can’t opt out...you’re just along for the ride.
And we will pay the price.
That’s ridiculous. Your whole boomer narrative is intellectually bankrupt and disingenuous.
If you want to be respected as a serious poster stop pretending that “boomers” is anything more than a group of people born in a certain period.
The media, who live off dividing the Nation and fanning controversy, love the boomer storyline. They are a force that destroys our society, erodes the human bonds, morality and individual endeavors that form the fabric of America.
The myth of the boomers getting rich off of the generations that followed them is like the myth of white oppression and white birth guilt, used to guilt trip, excuse the blamers deficiencies and get preferential treatment.
Yeah, pretend they're all Ukrainians and throw money at them.
I totally get our point—Im nearly the same age and like I said will have paid the max for about 40 years of my career and will have worked for over 50 and .gov says benefits will have to be reduced by my “retirement age”
My point being if we are gonna get screwed lets do it now and let everyone else experience it too—because You and I and many like us are going to get absolutely screwed on this
Baby Boomers average roughly $1.2–1.5 million in net worth per person, compared with about $550k–700k for Generation X, $180k–300k for Millennials, and under $100k for most of Generation Z, partly because assets like homes were cheaper to buy decades ago while modern housing shortages and NIMBY opposition have made new development and affordable ownership harder for younger generations.
It's also about keeping unviable but needed portions of the country afloat. There are large regions of the country which would be abandoned if there were not government checks being sent there from taxpayers. Schools, regional hospitals, and retirees are the only means of transferring money into them.
There's the other issue of changes in behavior. If the government didn't dangle a carrot in front of people for them to fall in line while working toward retirement, they'd go mercenary in the workforce, abandoning entire industries and regions while working.
They would pay as little as they possibly could in taxes since the incentive to maximize their Social Security payments would disappear. They'd quickly figure they might as well work under the table if the result is the same.
And it wouldn't just be a Bonus Army of veterans encamping in Washington DC like 47,000 did in 1932, it would be hundreds of thousands to millions taking over capitols throughout the country. It would be a plus for them if they got locked up on prison.
Japan's Unexpected Reality: Prisons as "Free Nursing Homes" for the Elderly
https://www.yumeiorigin.com/articles-en/japans-unexpected-reality-prisons-as-free-nursing-homes-for-the-elderly
SS isn't means tested.
That means that Warren Buffett qualifies for and is estimated to receive a Social Security check of around $5,181 per month.
To make payments like that to people like Warren Buffett when after 2033 receipts (current payroll SS tax collections) are only ~78% of outlays is bad policy. The Democrats setup this ponzi operated by Uncle Sam, but that didn't stop it from being a ponzi.
By current law, SS outlays are restricted to the SS payroll tax receipts designated.
Now the government could change the law and borrow to fill the gap, so that we add trillions more to the debt in order to send $5000+/mo checks to the people like Warren Buffett who don't need it.
But that would be ruinous to the nation, and greedy of the richest Boomers, so let's see what they decide...
you didn’t pay enough to afford what you’re being given now
And other fables of our time.
A single person who made the average wage (about $66,100 in 2023 dollars) and retired in 2020 would have paid about $367,000 into Social Security and would then receive about $383,000 in lifetime benefits.
A single person who hit the taxable maximum throughout their lifetime would see the biggest difference. Retiring in 2020, they would have paid $871,000 and would receive $618,000 in lifetime benefits.
The numbers look a bit different if you get married and whether or not you’re both working. A married couple who both earned the average wage over their lifetime and retired in 2020 would have paid in around $735,000 to Social Security and receive about $812,000 in benefits.
That seems hunky dory if you ignore how the money taken from wages would have grown if invested.
At a 100K salary you would pay 12.4% or $12,400/yr
After 41 years, with a contribution monthly of $1033.25 based on 100K yearly salary:
The Investment Breakdown
Initial Investment: $12,400.00 (first year withold)
Total Monthly Contributions: $508,359.00 (over 492 months)
Total Principal Invested: $520,759.00
Total Compounded Growth: ~$10.3 million to $10.6 million
At 11.0% Annualized Return: Your final total would be around $9.31 million.
At 11.5% Annualized Return: Your final total would be around $10.80 million.
At 11.6% Annualized Return: Your final total would be around $11.12 million.
If you adjust for inflation over those 41 years to calculate real purchasing power, the total value would feel closer to $3.2 million to $3.5 million in 1985 dollars.
Sounds like no one is taking out more than they contributed since the Government got a 40 year float rather than paying interest on the money “held”.
https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator
People aren’t averages.
Only grievance preachers think that way. It is a fraudulent way to parse the world.
Insofar as w have a democratic government and they had opportunity their whole lives to vote for a replacement. Who is to blame, if not the people, for being suckered into this calamity? Do they escape blame for not understanding? Or for falling for it?
My mother was getting $15,000 a year on Social Security benefits.
If her annual income was below the median annual household income (which is $83k/yr today), then her benefits would be untouched under my proposal to make the system solvent by means testing it for people who earn above the median household income.
I don’t know how she survived.
'Honor thy mother and father' means different things to different folks.
Did you think those deficits were truly a 'free lunch'?
The writing is on the wall for the gravy train of this Ponzi. They've already raised the taxes over 20 times(!) since instituting it, that's why future 'beneficiaries' are already looking at a negative return (before factoring inflation!).
Generations getting suckered doesn't mean the money is actually there. It was already spent:
Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.
Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy's tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government's promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which — through a complex series of steps — the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual deposit, i.e., as the equivalent of what was formerly a deposit of gold. The holder of a government bond or of a bank deposit created by paper reserves believes that he has a valid claim on a real asset. But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding than real assets. The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion.
Alan Greenspan, 1966 - Gold and Economic Freedom
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