It started when presidents used it as their own personal piggy bank to finance their special programs.
Well; one way to make up any shortfall is to discontinue all financial benefits to illegals which cost US taxpayers over $260B last year. That includes social security to illegals who never paid into it.
The disability thing - that has nothing to do with retirement! we were led to believe that SS was a retirement account. Instead, it pays “crazy” money to parents of unruly kids.
Change it back to retirement, and it’ll be solvent.
SS will be marginally better off in 2020...the sonsofbitches reduced my wife’s and my monthly payment $70 clams each.
Yeah, but thankfully there is plenty of money for trespassers to be taken care of. Yeah, it’s awesome how benevolent we are huh? (I meant how much we suck)
Social Security could have been put on an actuarially sound footing 25 years ago with such tiny changes no one would have noticed them.
But Americans are stupid, so we didn’t.
The cap will be lifted. A Tobin Tax will be passed and the revenue devoted to SS benefits.
Those are the only 2 fixes that will be politically palatable.
I suspect they will get rid of the tax cap on SS in effect taxing the rich. Always thought it a windfall on the years I exceeded the cap and one year actually did it in May.
But, but we were promised back in 1964!
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssa/usa1964-2.html
Self-Supporting
“The program is designed so that contributions plus interest on the investments of the social security trust funds will be sufficient to meet all of the costs of benefits and administration, now and into the indefinite future—without any subsidy from the general funds of the Government.
Both the Congress and the Executive Branch, regardless of political party in power, have scrupulously provided in advance for full financing of all liberalizations in the program.”
Eisenhower could have painlessly saved us from FDR’s high handed lawlessness but he chose to honor the man and not the oath of office or the Constitution, by rubber stamping FDR’s domestic legacy he shares equal responsibility for the ruin that is coming and has been coming just as a cancer starts small and then grows to threaten the whole body.
Why are people getting social security checks after age 105? Because there is no fool-proof mechanism for social security to know when the beneficiary dies. There are people over age 120 still getting checks!
Remember all the fuss about Enron? Politicians are responsible for this one. Good luck holding them responsible.
We have millions of foreigners that have never paid a dime into the system that are getting benefits.
REPUBLICAN HINT:
Ban all property taxes for Social Security elders.
Since 80% to 99% of property taxes is just a pension grab for unions, this would solve two problems with a single pen.
:-)
Sell it as opposing greedy cadillac fat union bosses, funding through SS,
or sell it as compassion for Grandma, prevent booting her out of home.
Union bosses are kicking Grandma out on to the street.
Thanks Congress.
You can all thank me for tipping us across the $1 Trillion milestone.
I don’t give a damn. If SS had properly invested and SAVED the funds stolen from me for the past 51 years, my account would be fully funded. SS is not GIVING me anything. Pay up, aspholes.
Boomers will be dead by 2054 so all the social security problems will be over.
SS should be for the person and spouse. What’s with money for kids. SVP RETIRED at work age 62. Wife 42. 3 kids under 8. Wife bragged they would get 1k per kid long time.
What’s really funny is that I am 1 1/2 years away from being eligible for SS.
Maybe if Congress stopped stealing the money from social security and allow us to invest like they did in several places around the country to get much higher returns.
I really hate these thieves.
How Three Texas Counties Created Personal Social Security Accounts and Prospered
https://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillmatthews/2011/05/12/how-three-texas-counties-created-personal-social-security-accounts-and-prospered/#51a0e7ec3283
And those who retire under the Galveston model do much better than Social Security. For example:
A lower-middle income worker making about $26,000 at retirement would get about $1,007 a month under Social Security, but $1,826 under the Alternate Plan, according to First Financial’s calculations.
A middle-income worker making $51,200 would get about $1,540 monthly from Social Security, but $3,600 from the banking model.
And a high-income worker who maxed out on his Social Security contribution every year would receive about $2,500 a month from Social Security vs. $5,000 to $6,000 a month from the Alternate Plan.