Everyone near retirement (or in retirement) should budget for and assume the 23% or 25% or whatever haircut is going to happen, and a recession will accelerate it, because SocSec tax collection will decline.
I would be against that because the government hasn’t shown it can run a fiscally responsible program. They are overspending by giving money to people who never or under-contributed, paying people long after they die, etc. I don’t want more of my money flying out the window.
Even considering it an insurance program, any insurance company operating like this would have gone out of business a long time ago. Insurance companies employ actuaries and analysts so there is a math formula relating revenue and payouts. Social security seems a political entitlement disconnected from any math.
Unless/until people embrace the real word, where things don’t fall from the sky, it will continue to be a battle to keep the ponzi scheme alive.
No, the SS benefits will not run out. They will just tax younger people at a higher level to cover the poor, elderly, and those that don’t plan for old age. You see, with this taxation system, success is penalized while failure is rewarded. If everyone was treated equally, there wouldn’t be tax brackets.
Of course, a certain amount of “success” is achieved by rigging the system, cheating vendors and workers, breaking the law… but you are apparently OK with that because money.
So having lots of money makes someone a better person, and people who “don’t plan” for retirement are inferior. Never mind that there might be some real reasons why they “don’t plan” for retirement. And don’t forget workers who lost their retirement because their pension funds were raided by “successful” people like hedge fund managers… (but you don’t judge them because they are “successful”)
So “successful” (i.e.: Rich) people are better, and people who don’t have retirement plans are to be judged harshly by folks like you as moral, civic, and personal failures. Got it.
(it says a lot more about you than about them…)
I look at it this way. There will always be a wealth gap. Assuem that poor people are given $1 million dollars each. They are still ‘poor’ compared to the billionaires.