Yves here. The Trump team is implementing a classic neoliberal ploy at Social Security, previously implemented at once respected and effective institutions like the Postal Service, the VA, and the UK’s NHS: budget stave it into poor performance so as to make it unpopular and facilitate privatization.
By Nancy J. Altman, president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition. Originally published at Common Dreams
The last few weeks have been the most destabilizing for Social Security in its 90-year history.
America’s historic retirement security program has survived world wars, pandemics, and recessions. But without a rapid course correction, it may not survive Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
In mid-February, Musk demanded access to private Social Security data. When the Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) declined, President Donald Trump immediately replaced her. He leapfrogged over 120 more senior employees to install a DOGE sympathizer, Leland Dudek.
Dudek is reportedly planning to lay off at least 15 percent of SSA’s already understaffed, overworked workforce. SSA staff were sent a message on February 27 telling them the organization will soon undergo an “agency-wide organizational restructuring” and incentivizing them to resign rather than get fired.
Trump and Musk have also instructed the government to terminate the leases on SSA’s over 1,200 field offices, which are critical for the agency’s public-facing work. Social Security field offices, like our post offices, are in every community. They’re there to help us when it’s our turn to access our benefits.
They’ve also ordered all workers to return to the office. But where are those workers supposed to go if their offices are closed? That only makes sense if the ultimate plan is not just to fire the currently reported 7,000 workers from SSA, but everyone!
Many of SSA’s most senior employees, including five of eight regional commissioners, have left. This is causing an enormous brain drain. Together, they represent a huge loss of critical institutional knowledge. Collectively, those employees had almost 1,000 years of institutional knowledge and skills.
SSA was already severely underfunded and understaffed before all of this. The DOGE bloodbath could lead to its collapse.
Most at immediate risk are those applying for disability benefits. Already, large numbers of disabled workers find themselves homeless, and a staggering 30,000 Americans die every year while waiting to receive their earned benefits. Now that number is likely to rise significantly.
Retirement benefits are less complicated to administer, but they’re not safe either. People who are accidentally over- or under-paid will have a far harder time correcting the error. And the planned layoffs are so destabilizing that seniors may even see a disruption in their monthly payments.
Furthermore, Americans will have a terrible time reaching SSA if they have questions, need to change their bank accounts, or have other issues. Moreover, grieving families may have trouble getting the survivor benefits their loved ones have earned for them. Relying on a website or worse, an AI chatbot, won’t cut it.
Nobody voted for this. During the presidential election, Donald Trump blanketed swing states with campaign flyers pledging that he wouldn’t touch Social Security. Make no mistake: Trump has broken that promise.
In his March 4 address before Congress, Trump lied about this extremely efficiently run program. Worse, he’s given Elon Musk, who recently slandered Social Security by calling it a criminal “Ponzi scheme,” the power to destroy it.
SSA’s budget comes out of the Social Security trust funds, not general government revenue. That means that when Americans pay into Social Security with every paycheck, they’re also paying for high-quality customer service.
That’s exactly what we would get — if Congress allowed SSA to spend just a few percentage points more of its $2.7 trillion surplus to hire and adequately train staff, open new field offices, and get wait times down. Instead, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are planning to utterly demolish Social Security’s customer service to pay for billionaire tax cuts.
It isn’t too late to stop this disaster. Everyone should call their members of Congress. Tell them that cuts to the Social Security Administration are cuts to Social Security. Tell them that you value your local Social Security field office.
Tell them to represent the people they serve by making Elon Musk and Donald Trump keep their hands off our earned benefits.
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Most probably didn’t, but every now and then the algorithms shift and I see a good amount of comments from people echoing the ponzi scheme claim, arguing that they’ll never get back what they paid in, that they’d be happy to get a lump sum payment of what they’ve paid in so far, etc. My guess is those people skew younger. Even if you thought that when you were younger I doubt you’d find many in their 60s and 70s who think that, after seeing what a big stock market downturn or unexpected layoff or illness can do to your retirement savings.
Those people saying they’d take a lump sum ought to wonder why so many retired people who didn’t pay in, thanks to their state not deducting for SS for those working for state or local govt jobs, now want grandfathered back into SS for pension benefits.
That’s why this Bill is moving through Congress:
Social Security Fairness Act: Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) update
https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/social-security-fairness-act.html?tl=3
That is for when you did pay into the system and weren’t allowed to take anything out. Someone like me who has many quarters of SS payments and is eligible for a state pension got penalized in the old system, and only got a fraction of what we were owed. Do I expect a full SS payment when I retire? No, I only payed into it maybe 30% of my working life. But I want that 30 percent.
I’ve commented on this in a prior discussion. I am one of 3 million people who paid
SS taxes early in my career, but did not pay into SS near the end of my career with the State of Nevada. The Windfall Elimination Program (WEP) reduced my SS pension radically, since I also earned a Nevada pension. The SS Fairness Act (1.5.25) eliminated WEP and re-instituted my full SS benefit. To my surprise the lump sum pre-payment (the Fairness At was retroactive to Jan., 2024) arrived in my bank account yesterday. (SSA originally indicated it could take a year or more.)
Since I began taking the reduced SS benefits years ago, it is not likely that future monthly payments will match what has already been denied. The whole concept of WEP was flawed. Denying SS benefits to people who paid into the system (minimum 10 years) because they spent 5 years in governmental service was wrong.
Yes I agree, also it was unfair to the people who work a government job and also have a part time business or career. In my experience there are many of those.
The SS Fairness Act has already been signed by Biden on Jan 5th.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Fairness_Act
Doesn’t mean the ongoing fiasco won’t disrupt the poor grunts who have to implement the details, but at least Trump doesn’t get the opportunity to veto it.
“Moving through Congress”?? Biden has already signed it. I was following closely as it also affects expats, who get a pension from a foreign country
What retirement savings? 46% of working Americans have not laid up $1,000.00?!
This cohort is well and truly eff’d.
Ponzi, wealth redistribution, forced – employer matched savings—
Social Security is key, and it is really key to a fair number of boomers on the lip of the demographic tsunami.
I often think of SS as a base salary, where the gig work post-‘retirement’ is the add-on income necessary to live. Many in America will work ’til they drop.
Fentanyl futures- congress better open the door to allow dignified, non-health related opting-out pretty soon!
Old and in the way!
https://youtu.be/rYETHsxAv8c
Yep, and this is especially true for low income boomers and Black and minority boomers.
Social Security, as a Federal government program, will not, cannot go broke, or fail to pay your benefits, whether you “pay in” or not. The Federal Government aint gonna run out of money. (That payroll tax is NOT needed to fund SS, or Medicare, or Medicaid, no more than a special tax is needed to pay for the War budget. Think about it.) You can no more “buy out” of SS than you can “buy out” of the War budget. This lunacy is based on the lie that SS is some kind of investment scheme, when it’s a Federal government Social insurance program, something you’ve earned throughout your working life–by working. It IS an entitlement, and it is VITAL to the culture, to the society. Imagine seventy six MILLION people, mostly older, having to go back to work. The libertarian right and ruling class have been trying to destroy SS since day one, and they are making headway. I urge you to go to the Polemecist blog, whereJim Kavanagh has written a few very good pieces on this, among other things. You can start out by searching “the Roosevelt ruse.”
Thank you for the Polemicist blog suggestion.
And then when, where wons’t can an idea perforce rule. Me thinks not so. / imo.
And that ponzi scheme rhetoric has been around for decades. Al Gore’s “lockbox” rhetoric when he was defending SS 25 years ago didn’t really help much, since it was a pretty inaccurate description of how the system works, and definitely inaccurate if you wanted to describe how the system could work. Yes, it’s funded by workers paying into it, but it doesn’t have to be. Fund it differently, and there will never be any risk of a shortfall.
I don’t think cutting benefits is going to happen. If it does, people will blame Trump, which they of course should if it happens on his watch, but members of both parties have been foaming the runway for this for a really long time, with the ponzi scheme rhetoric, failing to staff the department properly, etc., etc.
The biggest danger I see in trying to assign full blame to Trump with the assumption everything will be back to normal once he’s gone is that it lets all the other bad actors who have been corrupting our government for a really long time off the hook.
For the members of the Confraternity of Saint Luigi, health insurance company CEOs are just the beginning.
As revolutionary organizers the world around realize, a “Vanguard” is needed to “kick start” the revolutions. What better than a secular monastic order?
Stay safe. Keep the faith, baby.
Order of St. George?
Hmmm. I suspect a subtext here.
This would suggest something like a Tory version of Labour’s attempt to “assist” the American Democrat Party in the 2024 election. Perhaps the FSB really is a Dr. Fu Manchu level villainous organization.
Make Hillary a Dame Commander and have done with this democracy make believe.
Either way, the times, they are a changin.
Which St George? (Or, whose St George, I guess…)
Vote for what? The Dems will go along with cutting SS. Joe Biden talked about doing it for his entire career; Obama’s “grand bargain,” which would have cut SS, was defeated only because right-wing Republicans wouldn’t go along with his modest tax hikes.
Just make 100 percent of all income (including long term capital gains) subject to social security payments. Problem solved.
I’ve been paying into social security for about 15 years now, and I really don’t expect to see a dime from it when I retire. Would prefer an opt-out if that was an option. Don’t have a lot of faith in its staying power.
This points to a larger demographic problem in most mature, western countries. Inverted population pyramids and low fertility rates result in too few working age people supporting too many pensioners. As the decades roll by this structural problem is only going to worsen. I will admit I do feel a sense of betrayal that the generations before mine have seen benefits from this program, but any cuts or reductions in benefits will be born by those currently in their 30s and 40s who have already paid in for decades. I will admit I feel a bit robbed. I could have done more with those funds if I was allowed to have kept them.
Obviously I’m not an expert by any means, but this is definitely the most common opinion held by my peers. We have and are paying to keep seniors solvent, without any prospect or expectation of the same social contract being extended to us, which creates quite a bit of cynicism towards the program as a whole.
Whose fault is that? Have you been voting against your own self-interests?
If SS ceases to be the third rail in politics, it’s because voters allowed it.
As Mencken said “The American people deserve to get what they voted for, and they deserve to get it good and hard.”
Honestly, I think it’s a structural problem. Its simple demographics. Low replacement rates. My paternal grandparents had 8 kids. My parents had 4. I have 2. This is a macro trend across every mature western society. US is actually in a better position than places like Italy, but it doesn’t take a genius to see the problem here.
I’m not a genius, so what’s the problem?
The Federal Government is self-funding, spending does not depend on taxing workers. #LearnMMT
Dismantling Social Security is a neoliberal political project that has nothing to do with funding. It appears that Trump will accomplish Obama’s “grand bargain.”
We’ve got robots for that now. The question is, will the robots work for you and other citizens, or will they work for Elon?
Undocumented immigrants pay Social Security payroll taxes but don’t get anything out of it. That should more than make up for any demographic shortfall.
Demographics doesn’t have anything to do with it. Everybody gets paid out more than they pay in due to the fact that we have a capitalist economy that runs on debt which basically builds in inflation.
A sovereign country that controls its own currency, as the US does, can spend as much money as it wants, any time it wants.
The only restraints to making sure pensioners get paid out enough to live on are political ones.
If there is a structural problem due to demographic transition, it will probably manifest as a shortage of workers to provide care for the aged. Funding is not a constraint (US creates funds as needed; currently the newly created funds take the form of Treasury debt, which the Fed could fully monetize were it permitted to); the constraint is capacity to provide the goods and services that the aged will need.
It’s tempting to think you could have done more with those funds, especially coming off back to back years of 25% gains in the stock market. But to my point above those funds could also be wiped out by unforeseen circumstances. The point of a benefit like SS is that you can count on it through ups and downs.
Professional investment managers and most investors underperform the markets. Period. A money manager here recently went through many cuts of the data. Basically only 1% outperform. So looking at averages with envy is the wrong way to go about it.
On a personal level, I invest in land and orchards. I’m not big into equity markets. Any money I have in the market sits in high dividend yielding MLP pipeline companies, which have achieved our financial goals as a repository for spare cash until I see a suitable field come on the market. I sure could use the tens of thousands of dollars that FedGov took from my paychecks over the last couple decades, I would own probably another 25 acres of bearing trees.
a) Of course those orchards will be completely unaffected by global warming! /s
b) You continue to believe that dollars grow on billionaires.
c) closing your eyes and stopping up your ears is not a winning life strategy. Just sayin’
Yes, and I would chime in with . . . if you don’t care about President Musk taking away my Social Security after I have spent decades paying into it, then I don’t care about global warming taking away all your trees after you have spent several decades paying into them.
I can do ” I don’t care about you” just as good as you can. Tit for tat. Even Steven.
“Past performance is not assurance of future pay out.”
Many people live (sparingly) on their SS benefits, but is not recommended as the average annual benefit is ~$25K. It is best to have other savings. As for dividends (stock market) I own a stake in Sempra Energy, it lost 19% of its value in one trading day; yet to recover any of that. Fortunately, my stake had appreciated 10x over the years, before declining 2x in one day.
Wall Street is a random walk—SS benefits will likely arrive.
People have been saying they’ll never see a dime in Social Security benefit since Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. / ;)
When I began working back in the late 1960s the company allowed insurance/finance guys to give little retirement spiels to employees. I distinctly remember their claim that social security would never be around by the time I was ready to retire. Actually, what disappeared was my pension. Not all of it but a big chunk due to changes over the years. However, we did get the 401K/IRA, well some of us.
Stephen,
Since its inception, the younger generations have paid into SSI to fund an income for seniors who have left the work force. Changes made in the mid 1980s raised the retirement age and funding levels of all workers, IIRC, under age 55, or so. That legislation created a surplus that would carry SSI for approximately 50 years. The surplus fund is currently about 2.5 trillion, and will run out in approximately 10 years.
My generation, and others, funded the surplus. It is high time that younger generations insist that, once again, the SSI system be changed to create another surplus funding that will assure your retirement security. We did our part. It’s your turn.
PS I paid into the system for 58 years before I retired. I don’t feel as though I was “cheated.”
Right, so what changes are proposed? Further raising the retirement age and increasing the withholding tax? You can see how that would make my generation feel robbed. Finish line pushed further away, another example of the boomers pulling the ladder up behind themselves on their way out. Government secured pensions for thee but not for me? Even if not a true representation of facts, that is still how it will be perceived by the folks, like myself, who will be in the receiving end of those reforms. My dad got to retire at 65, but I have to wait until 75? Not a politically viable option. That will lose elections.
The other direction is raising or eliminating the cap on income subject to the withholding. That is a much more palatable policy proposal, and probably should be done very soon.
The point of my comment, fundamentally, is that my generation isn’t terribly sympathetic to the plight of the social security administration, because we see it as another example of upwardly directed income redistribution that will not benefit us when it’s our turn in line. Which makes the SSA an easy target for the bomb throwers at DOGE and their ilk.
But in your comment you specifically point to the solution–raising the cap on withholding. So I understand you’re frustrated with the funding, but why not spend time advocating for the solution you point to and stop trying to ask for lump sum payments while complaining about the system possibly not delivering for you?
Who is going to be against raising the cap? The $150K+ earners. I don’t expect a lot of sympathy for them.
Here’s one other solution similar to what you suggested: Raise the cap at 2x or 3x the inflation rate every year until we get back to, say, a 50 year cushion. This seems better than the “rip off the band aid” solution of eliminating the cap.
I’m a Boomer, so discount my opinion if you wish, but the intergenerational comparisons you’re making go a lot deeper than SS and even the demographics to which you point. People like Nate Hagens (not a Boomer) talk about the “Carbon Pulse.” This “pulse” is peaking now:
So you’re faced not only with a radical demographic shift that means fewer workers per retiree, you are also running into the end of cheap energy just as energy demands for AI, etc. goes into exponential growth. Broad impoverishment is on the horizon regardless of “Drill, baby, drill.”
“EROI of different fuels and the implications for society”
So if you have a beef against us Boomers, it shouldn’t be about SS. We ourselves got a worse deal on SS than our parents. You should be complaining about the way we blew through so much of Earth’s supply (scroll down for graph) of magic black power juice that took millions of years to produce. And we put a hell of a lot of carbon in the air while we were at it. Most of that was done by the wealthiest among us: the top 10% consume 50% of the energy and spew 50% of the carbon. Blame Boomers. Blame Capitalism. Blame our genes. Causes are important at this late date only so far as they lead to positive steps that can be taken now. We’re headed for much worse than SS cuts, probably well before you reach retirement.
It’s a little like a movie we Boomers saw when we were young called “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Chased relentlessly by the Pinkertons, Butch and Sundance find themselves looking over the edge of a high cliff down into a Stage 4 rapid. With the Pinkertons coming up on them, Butch proposes they jump. Sundance demurs, and after some questioning, he admits,”I can’t swim.” “Oh hell,” laughs Butch, “the fall ‘ll kill ya.”
Now to counter all that bad news, here’s a 16-minute Nate Hagens podcast about rocks in a stream.
This. Social Security will eventually be a scam because those printed dollars wouldn’t be worth the paper they are printed on. I think most people here are still deluded because the word MMT itself works as a thoughtstopper i.e. money is the most limiting factor and if you just print enough of it, eggs, clean air, eternal life, etc will be possible. I’ve said this before, if that’s the case, we should just create the BIGGEST government ever, like the United Federation of Planets, and then we’ll just live happily ever after, am I right?
Why? Even with the false metric that we all “pay in” as we go, all of the “experts” agree that SS is “fully funded” for the next 20 years. But that story doesn’t carry any weight apparently. Musk is trying to destroy SS for everybody, and the ruse that our payroll taxes “pay for” SS benefits matters little or not at all to him. There is evidence that Trump knows about the unsettling fact that SS is NOT at all in trouble as far as paying benefits, because as a Federal government program, its funded as a non-discretionary program, unlike, say, the War budget, which is discretionary, and must be re-approved every year. SS MUST, as a matter of law, pay out benefits, whether or not some bullshit payroll tax is paid by us, or if there isnt “enough money” in some “trust fund.” Thats why Trump has said, on more than one occasion, that he wanted to eliminate the payroll tax. It isn’t needed to “fund” SS, and he knows it. Think of the tens of millions of grateful taxpayers (like you) who would no longer have to pay that tax.
So, why does the Ruling Class want to destroy SS (and Medicare, Medicaid, etc.)? Because it drives them crazy that the government gves the citizenry something to improve and maintain their lives. To them, it’s something for nothing. They don’t think about the catastrophic societal results of their lunatic plans. Or maybe they do.
SSI is a welfare program administered by the SSA. Has nothing to do with the OADSI funds.
That’s how insurance works. You pay into it when you don’t need it, which funds the folks who do need it. Health insurance, home insurance, car insurance, that’s how it works.
You don’t give them money that they stash away with your name on it.
Yes. It’s insurance against
a outliving your assets
b death of “bread winner”
c disability
Nevermind that taxes don’t fund government spending, changes such as raising the income limit on SS payroll taxes aren’t on the table tells me what really is going on. Meanwhile, pensions continue to be underfunded and are targets of looting, while most workers now don’t get them at all.
As for the population pyramid, aside from immigration, neoliberalism has no answer. Especially when education, healthcare, housing, food, etc. continue be targets of extractive rent seeking.
We can always find a trillion in defense spending every year – no sweat
This is a narrative the Peterson Institute has been marketing to the young since I was young 40 years ago.
What a society can’t afford is giving all its productive wealth to oligarchs and allowing its population to get sick and die: this brings forward the end of such a society.
If the oligarchs get this last bit of wealth being distributed to those who need it, it will indeed usher in the end. How a nation that maximizes rents on it’s population while minimizing all possibilities of income while starving its domestic economy of basic cash flow intends to compete with a nation like China that essentially is doing the opposite, remains a mystery to me.
Excellent comment jsn.
Greed knows no bounds I guess…
And you and your peers are wrong. You’ve been lied to. You ain’t “paying” to keep 68-year-old me “solvent.” The social contract here is between us and the Federal Govenment program, Social Security, which DOES NOT NEED ANY TAX FROM YOU OR YOUR PEERS TO PAY OUT BENEFITS, now or at any time. Know and understand this. You ARE being cheated, and lied to, by both political Parties in this country.
its seems to me that its extremely difficult to get people to understand how insurance works.
if you pay into your home owners insurance, your car insurance, perhaps you “MIGHT” have noticed as conditions change, your policy premiums will in many cases go up.
but since bill clinton, there has been no attempts at a policy premium adjustment, only the continued abuse of starvation and privatization attempts.
any home owner or car owner should understand how insurance works. if you pay your premium, it will never cover your loss from fire etc. instead your premium relies on the premiums of others, a classic case of collectivism.
without that collectivism, you could never afford the real costs.
on top of that, the reason why we have S.S. is because you have a long life, who knows what might happen, and in most cases you will never be able to save whats needed.
which in most cases is impossible anyways, you have no idea how long you will live, and what might happen.
we have history as a guide.
see how easy and simple this is?
This story from yesterday could be significant.
https://www.ft.com/content/96783e46-7832-4330-b7b6-21808d0b22d3
It says Trump has been getting complaints from Republicans as well as Dems and, as is his way, is now trimming and saying only department heads should be worthy of deciding who is redundant.
It seems Musk didn’t get the message:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-power.html
A food fight between Rubio and Musk yesterday during the cabinet meeting.
I’ll bet Trump is getting complaints, and he ain’t heard anything yet. I dream of the day when that idiot fires the bigger idiot Musk. We’ll see, but the situation as it stands is not good.
If Trump protests, there’s nothing to stop the oligarchs and their CIA/Palantir buddies whacking him and installing their ex-employee Vance. They (imnsho) are in charge now.
Thought experiment: since Jan 20th has there been anything significant from the Trump admin that did not directly correlate with the wishes of this faction?
There are over 50 million people in the US receiving a pension. So roughly one out of every five adult Americans now have their pension under threat. Does Trump really want to alienate this group and risk seeing the Republicans being obliterated in the mid-terms? Vance could see his whole political career die before he even has a chance to be President. Because if there is one thing that old people know how to do is vote and besides, there is not enough cat food in all North America to feed 50 million people. /sarc
https://www.statista.com/statistics/194295/number-of-us-retired-workers-who-receive-social-security/
It’s Trump’s final term; he can’t run again. The old guard Republicans made enemies with him. I don’t think he cares about the next elections.
Well if we are going to pull out the crystal ball then why the assumption that he wants to destroy SS? The campaign against SS was more a dream of those old line Republicans.
Trump on the other hand just wants to glorify himself which IMHO makes him more likely to spare SS and maybe even Gaza.
In any case I believe we have to separate the probabilities from the always worse case Dem talking points. As with the recent election their only remaining pitch seems to be OMG Trump. Perhaps they will in the end be right about this but they are hardly objective observers.
How’s that working out for you so far? as Doctor Phil would say.
Never used to watch him. Guess you did.
But to answer your question I was a lot more worried about Biden or the Collective Biden starting WW3. When it comes to Trump I ignore him as much as possible which, if he knew, would doubtless cause distress. What’s an ego trip without an audience?
Doctor Phil was so famous that he became a video meme. I learned about ” How’s that working out for you” without ever having had to watch Doctor Phil at all.
Trump isn’t the President here. Musk is the President. And Musk wants to abolish Social Security. ” Avoiding WWIII ” was a very reasonable worry. But if you really believed that, wouldn’t you have voted for Trump to make a little more sure? That’s what I did when it was Trump v. Clinton. I voted for Trump the Lesser Evil.
About “ignoring Trump’, well . . . as Leon Trotsky used to say, ” you may not be interested in Trump, but Musk is very interested in you.”
But stay focused on “ignoring Trump”. We’ll see how that works out for you.
You ask how something that hasn’t happened yet is working out for me. Better rhetorical questions pleez…
And the last time I was in a SS office was around age 12 when I got my SS number. So I doubt that closing the offices of a now largely automated process is much of a threat to me personally. SS disability has always been controversial for the Repubs however. Has nothing to do with Musk.
Elon does have a day job. It’s likely he will be back to it soon.
Yeah I hadn’t been in an SS office since I was a kid and got my card, either. Till I turned 65 and needed certain documentation from them which COULD NOT be provided through the website. Believe me there were plenty of people in the offices each time I went in there for help. Not kids. Old people and people with disabilities (also mostly old). I do think there needs to be an in-person option for people who need it or prefer it. Not every service fits neatly into a “press 1 for this, press 2 for that” or AI chatbot paradigm.
(And now that I think about it, the Trump Collective ( the Gilead Christianists and the ArmaRapturists) will be just as likely to start WWIII, using Israel as the trigger, as the Biden Collective would have been to start WWIII with Russia using Ukraine as the trigger.
So that looks to have been a one hand-other hand worry anyway.)
Steve Bannon makes this point directly. T ran on not cutting SS and Medicare/Medicaid benefits. (No one is against rooting out waste and fraud.) Bannon thinks if T cuts benefits he’ll loose his base voters in the next election. Bannon is a shrewd political thinker.
True, one has to be a sociopath to play the game..
Bannon has no power here, there or anywhere. He is just stand-up entertainment for his podcast base and for Conservative conferences.
Bannon was talking about voting behaviour, not making some claim to special power(s). Unless it takes such powers to see the obvious.
Rev, you’re assuming that Vance would need to be elected or re-elected. I’m not so sure about that.
We’re going to see if SS really is a third rail of politics. I suspect (at this point mostly it’s hope) Trump is drunk with power and massively overreaching on several fronts. His backup plan could be to blame it all on Elon, “I trusted this guy and he went too far; I had no idea!”
But President Musk is moving so fast that by the time that happens, if it even happens that way, all the SSA offices will be closed and all the workers dispersed beyond finding and bringing back ever again.
By the time the TechBro/ Old-Line Billionaire/ Gilead Christian changes are made permanent, the Republican’s voter base won’t matter anymore. If they all die from no more Social Security and no more Medicare, they will have fulfilled their purpose. They will have been written off as “disposable voters”.
Perhaps a monument will be erected somewhere in honor of their patriotic sacrifice.
I like your dystopian take on things, a little too dark I hope. I am not holding my breath though.
I keep waiting for some sort of “means testing”, so as to escape having to pay me the maximum benefits due me for having postponed my benefits until age 70. But that’s a page out of the Democrat playbook, IIRC. Who knows how this current clown car administration will manage to grab it, but I have no doubt that they will give it a try.
Expect an email from Elon telling you to respond with “ACCEPT” to get lump sum payment or forego all future payments.
At 75 we’ll get an email from Elon Musk and Ezekiel Emmanuel, demanding 5 ways we are adequately enjoying our peasant retirement, and asking whether we wouldn’t rather just die.
Well, I will not hit “ACCEPT”. And we will just see if there is even a legal system anymore through which my imputed “foregoing all future payments” can be contested.
Congress (Both parties) have ignored the funding crisis for Social Security for more than 25 years. The date for it’s insolvency has been known (give or take a decade) since the late 1990s and has been shortened by the Financial Crisis and Covid. No action from either party and they have willingly seem to want to let it run out the clock and be someone else’s problem.
That’s because all of the solutions are political landmines for those in office.
It’s now reaching crisis level and the solutions are probably a combination of higher taxes, higher retirement age, and benefit cuts. Those on Social Security now need to share in that pain instead of sticking it to future retirees.
I’ve heard my entire life that Social Security likely won’t be there for me and at 56, the clock will run out just as I am hitting retirement age. If you are going to stick it to me then the boomers need to take their hit as well. Screw them.
All Congress needs to do is lift the cap on covered earnings. Let the richer cohort pay into SS on more of their healthy incomes. For an extreme example, what percentage of Bezos income is subject to Social Security FICA tax? .000001%?… if that much? / ;)
What Is the Social Security Tax Limit?
Once your earnings exceed a specific amount, you can stop paying into Social Security for the rest of the year.
https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/social-security/articles/what-is-the-social-security-tax-limit
bullet points:
-The Social Security tax limit refers to the maximum amount of earnings that are subject to Social Security tax.
-For 2024, the Social Security tax limit is $168,600. Workers earning less than this limit pay a 6.2% tax on their earnings.
Any income over that limit is not subject to Social Security tax. The rich get richer. Lift that cap to $250,000 or more. With inflation that sounds about right. / ;)
Well, there’s always the idea of ” Stocastic Eugenics” bandied about on occasion in the past in the comments here. Reduce the help/government programs for the eldest of our populations, create false sense of security to only rely on “vaccines” that ultimately do not work as well as advertised in an ongoing pandemic so people live their lives without a care of catching Covid and who knows how many variants out there, just plain old throwing the weakest out to the wolves, that’ll reduce the need for SS by reducing the population needing SS and SSI, Medicare/Medicaid, etc.
sarcasm off now. Though I do have to wonder if that is the underlying plan. In light of all the posing on both sides in Washington, they just do not care.
Until it actually threatens their reelection chances.
“… the underlying plan.”
As many of we Tinfoil Hat Fetishists have learned over the years, “Fell Plots and Designs” are not needed in many cases to carry out various malign plans.
Just look at the processes and results to see the trajectories and their endpoints. No Cabals Needed. Where the Cabals come into their own is often in recognizing trends and using such trends to further their agendas. To create a crossover analogy here; just as opportunism is a major factor in Predatory Capitalism, so too is it a factor in Predatory Politics.
As Tammany Hall Sachem George Washington Plunkett eloquently stated it when questioned about his peculations: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”
Something on Plunkitt, the 1900’s Modern Major Politico.
See: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/plunkitt-of-tammany-hall/
The maximum benefit at FRA is $4018/mo The suggestion of raising the FICA tax limit without increasing the benefit amount turns it into a welfare/income transfer scheme. That’s on top of the Medicare IRMAA.
Why have a cap on social security at all? Let the rich pay 6.2% of their income (make income = all earnings, not just wages). The rich can pay 6.2% and it won’t hurt them.
Matt,
The funding “crisis” endpoint was defined by the SSI rescue plan executed in the mid 1980s. The Plan had a funding line of 50 years which created the surplus we now enjoy. This surplus will be drained in about 10 years, per the original plan. No surprise. The creators of the plan assumed later generations would act when it became necessary.
The “screw them” Boomers paid into the rescue plan for most of their working careers. They are not to blame for the failure of the current political class to remedy the problem. Did you vote for Trump? or did you not even bother to vote?
Our decisions have repercussions.
Good point Jeff, only it is not being well received here. Here is my recollection of Greenspan’s Blue-Ribbon Committee on SS: We were to “overpay-in-advance” for our retirement through very noticeable increases in FICA tax withholdings.
“In 1977, an aging population and recently expanded benefits threatened Social Security’s future. The trust fund was projected to go bankrupt by 1983, and according to the program’s trustees, if we waited until then to make changes, only a 70 percent tax hike would restore the program to solvency.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan and congressional leaders appointed a commission to devise a solution to the crisis. Led by Alan Greenspan, future chairman of the Federal Reserve, the commission included House and Senate members from both parties, so neither party would be able to blame the other for proposing tax hikes or benefit cuts. After two years of study, the commission delivered its unanimous recommendations to Congress.
The Greenspan Commission’s report led to the last major reform of Social Security to date. Signed into law in April 1983, it shored up the program by delaying benefits for younger generations and asking working Americans to contribute more to their retirement:”
https://www.freefacts.org/resources/events-in-context-the-1983-greenspan-commission
SSI = Supplemental Security Income
Nothing to do with the trust funds
“Funding crisis” – RUFKM? Why cap the max income level for wealthy “taxpayers” (/s)? Are your parents still alive? Would you have them “take their hit” as well? Are you ready to give them room and board ? You will be eligible to collect benefits as early as age 62 (like I did). As a self-employed for the last 40 years – doubtful if I can afford to “retire”- my SS check is rather meager compared to those that worked W-2 jobs all their life but I’m sure glad that I paid what I could in Sched. SE tax every April 15th. As an ‘old’ person you’ll (hopefully) learn that birthdays pass by faster and faster. “And so it goes.” (h/t K. Vonnegut)
Wrong, there is no funding crisis. #LearnMMT
This is a political move to privatize, any mention of a funding crisis is neoliberal propaganda.
The boomers took their hit when FICA taxes were doubled starting in 1983(I believe) with the Great Reagan Social Security Rescue. So I have been paying that doubled FICA tax ever since 1983. The theory behind that was all that double-the-FICA-taxes would be put into a Trust Fund to be paid back out to the boomers when they retired. The Trust Fund would be drained down to zero when the last boomer died.
Screw every single person who says “screw the boomers”. Screw them each, screw them all. Screw them every one.
There never was a funding crisis. The fake hyped funding crisis was fixed in 1983. That created the Trust Fund. ” Insolvency” is the fake-meme-word created for paying out the last Trust Fund dollar when the last boomer has died.
If I’m not mistaken the underlying law/authority rests with Congress and not the Executive and whatever this DOGE thing is. And based on below, the backstop is Congress, so all the Bluster of Trump & Elon should (should!) amount to nothing. I would hope (hopium) that every single Dem would oppose and some Republicans, if for no other reason than self-preservation, would vote against any ponzi scheme Elon is cooking up.
It isn’t too late to stop this disaster. Everyone should call their members of Congress. Tell them that cuts to the Social Security Administration are cuts to Social Security. Tell them that you value your local Social Security field office.
Not any more, it doesn’t. Its a “post legal” world now.
The only thing that can stop the force of Musk (trump) is greater force moving faster.
It seems to me that it isn’t stated often enough that employers pay half the Social Security tax (except for those who are self-employed and pay both halves, thanks to Reagan). It’s a tough tax to avoid, and I’m sure many corporations would prefer to see the end of it.
Pity that the income cap isn’t repealed – for anyone worrying about the future of Social Security, if it has any future given the attitude of both sides of the aisle.
I wonder if employers care that much about paying SS.
The SS amount is part of the compensation package they and their competitors pay to keep their USA workers.
The total compensation cost is what determines the true cost of a worker, and must factor into corporate outsourcing and automation decisions as foreign based workers and robots do not pay SS.
In this view, the employee really pays all SS costs, it seems like a 50% lower amount as it is hidden by the “paid by the employer” fiction.
“paid by the employer” fiction…..
Not if you’re self-employed, John. I was self employed for nearly 45 years, and I paid a whopping 15% + every year on my income. It was real. Trust me.
I am suggesting that the total SS tax it is ALWAYS paid by the employee.
I’m not suggesting the amount paid by the employer is fictional.
In your case, imagine you created an independent company that employed you.
Your company would need to find a way to fund its half of the SS tax.
The company has no magic source of funds to cover its “half”.
The employee, self employed or not, pays the entire SS tax bill.
“Nobody voted for this.”
And no billionaire campaign contributor agreed to continuously debase their wealth to provide common people benefits.
That’s really the rub. If the defense budget is to increase year over year and higher interest rates cause debt service to become more expensive then where else to cut to make a dent in the deficit? I saw a video of an interview of some European figurehead saying that he agreed with Trump that Europe wasn’t paying their fair share of defense spending. The interviewer kept asking him, multiple times, what to cut if we have to increase our defense budget. He refused to answer.
Now I don’t think Trump will touch SS. I think Medicaid might be in trouble though. Trump is not up for reelection but he has the ego to want to be remembered as a great president. Peace in Ukraine, a resolution to the situation in the Middle East, bringing businesses and jobs back to the US, and a booming domestic economy all fit with this. Gutting SS does not. President Vance in 4 years, on the other hand, I think anything is on the table for entitlement reform. The way the Democrats are handling the Trump presidency it wouldn’t surprise me if Vance enjoys a larger Republican majority in Congress. This will allow for some degree of Republican lawmaker deserters without preventing to legislation from passing.
Did you even read the article? Perhaps I misunderstood your comment but: Say what? You believe that oligarchs “debase their wealth” and provide the common people with benefits? What is this Medieval times? Maybe Techno-Totalitarian Neo-Feudalism is an apt label after all.
“Entitlement reform” is a euphemism for kleptocracy. Looks like some people might enjoy being lied to and abused. What’s the psychological term for that again?
We need to make Elmo the first Trillionaire after all. Maybe we should all write him an extra check to achieve that goal to make “merka #1 again
You need to accurately describe the problem before you can address it. Saying “Nobody voted for this”, while true, is only half the picture. The other half is the billionaire class isn’t playing business as usual anymore. As much as people voted for change, the billionaire class isn’t living with the status quo any longer and also want change. Just not a change you agree with. Regardless of political affiliation, Congress is more in tune with their donor class than their constituents so “No one voted for this” is of lesser concern to them. Musk said, on a number of occasions, the debt is growing exponentially and has to be addressed. Debt is a human construct so he either truly believes that it’s something real and needs to be addressed, he’s concerned that the current debt trajectory will devalue his own wealth in the future, or using it as an excuse to satisfy some inner pathology. Looking at the actions of Fortune 500 CEO’s and executives, including my former employer, I believe many of these personalities would be in agreement with Musk. Once they reach trillionaire status, they will still expect an ROR off their investments. I don’t know how to solve this, no party is offering to cut defense spending, just presenting the other half of the equation to balance the discussion to better define the problem.
At least we can agree that there is no democracy, freedom, or meritocracy – just PR slogans and BS. There is a way out of this, but it isn’t pretty and not likely to happen. Far too many suffer from Mass Stockholm Syndrome and will cheer-lead their own destruction. Not to sound overly pessimistic ;-)
I suppose it depends what you mean by not touching SS. In Trump’s mind that could just mean that as long as you still get your check each month that it doesn’t matter if it’s coming from the Social Security Administration or from BenefitsX or whatever company Elon starts to take over Social Security (minus their processing fee of course).
But Trump’s mind is not the “controlling post-legal authority” here. So what is in Trump’s mind really does not matter.
I think that trump already believes that he’s a great president, maybe the greatest ever, and that now he’s all in on becoming the richest sob to ever be president. Now he’s shaking the money tree, and he wants to have it all, every last blessed dollar, all to himself, because he’s one greedy sob. See the video below kindly provided by JonnyJames. Trump is the thief that George Carlin is talking about, and nobody, not even hakeem and chuckie schumer, explains it so well. The pity is that we have to dig out videos of dead people explaining to us, the living, what the hell is going on in our lives today. One hope is the rise of new and younger men and women who will have the ability to lead an effective resistance to the cancerous elites of the current ruling class. These new leaders will not be part of any party, but will arise, without their realization of it at the time, from an uprising of the general population. Looking backwards they’ll understand that it was the revolutionary moment that carried them. That’s my hope, at least.
This may have been mentioned before at NC, but I would like to call attention to a very relevant article by Stephanie Kelton on this topic. She summarizes the topics she covers in the last paragraph:
In a footnote she explains that it is not “Elon Musk” in particular and his recent actions she is referring to – she is using him as a symbol of the fact that income inequality has risen so much since the last major readjustment of the Social Security system in 1983.
https://stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/elon-musk-is-the-reason-social-security
DAVE: “……. the fact that income inequality has risen so much since the last major readjustment of the Social Security system in 1983.”
Gary Stevenson has a lot of good commentary on how income inequality has ruined Merry Old England. The USA seems to be closing the gap behind them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ROtVQt98s
“…Nobody voted for this. During the presidential election, Donald Trump blanketed swing states with campaign flyers pledging that he wouldn’t touch Social Security. Make no mistake: Trump has broken that promise…”
But there is no way to “vote” against oligarchy or kleptocracy in the USA. The US “has no functioning democracy…an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery” Let’s not forget.
I didn’t vote for ANY Ds or Rs, I symbolically did write-ins, as usual. I am told I “wasted” my vote and that I must “vote for a D or R. Some democracy eh. A cruel joke.
The supporters of DT continue to make pathetic excuses and believe in lies. Sadly, the facts don’t matter, only a cult-like belief in their Savior/Judas. The DT has been a serial liar his whole life. He lies so much, he can’t keep track of his own BS. Since our faux PR democracy offers no meaningful choice, millions of gullible desperate people WANTED to believe a conman politician who tells them lies they WANT to hear.
This sort of thing should be expected. I recall during the Bush Jr. regime, talk of privatizing SS and turning it over to Wall St. directly.
The only “good” thing about the DT2 regime is that the Kleptocratic Oligarchy is now front-and-center and in our faces. Millions are starting to see it, but millions of others choose not to look at the elephant in the room, they will make excuses and believe the lies until the tragic end. Elmo The Oligarch should make all of this obvious.
It’s Musk making the most noise. Musk is a defense contractor, a part of the military industrial complex (MIC). The MIC, like Wall St., sees any large pot of govt money as something they should have, something they should get their hands on to spend on whatever. / my 2 cents
Yes, that’s why I think Kleptocratic Oligarchy is also apt. Elmo the Oligarch (aka Elon Musk)
( also aka Elmo Twitler).
Good one, I had to look twice to see it: (where’s my glasses?) Elmo TWITLER. !
Thank you for the kind words. Feel free to use it. If enough people use it maybe it will take hold and stick.
I would also consider calling Elo Twitler a ket head. ( ” Ket” as in “ketamine”). Or maybe a drugged-up ket head. If people ask what that means, that is an opportunity to tell them.
And we could start referring to President Musk’s little boy as mini-Musk.
I’ll double down on flora’s 2 cents but Professor Kelton’s Substack post is a must read – I’m still digesting details and have yet to peruse the comments but fully intend to. I’m a paid subscriber of hers because of being introduced to her work (and the concept of MMT) through Yves and NC for which I’m eternally grateful.
It took me quite a while to abandon the neoclassical economic ideology (economics is not science) I was taught in my younger years.
Steve Keen, Michael Hudson, Yves Smith, Richard Wolff, Randall Wray, Stephanie Kelton, Yanis Varoufakis, James Galbraith, Jack Rasmus et al. are great sources who have debunked neoclassical/neoliberal theory. IMO, mainstream economics has become something of a laughingstock, especially after the Crash of 08 and the TBTF era.
What’s Monica Lewinsky up to these days? https://www.counterpunch.org/2004/10/30/how-monica-lewinsky-saved-social-security/
She saved Social Security from the evil Bill Clinton. Now we have to save it all over again from the evil President Musk and his little Assistant Vice President Trump.
The only hail Mary pass I can think of here would be for all the Democratic officeholders in unison to shut the entire government down and keep it shut down until Doge is fired, all Doge and Doge adjacement personnel are removed from all there positions, every cancelled lease is restored, every layoffed, bought-out or fired Federal worker is restored to their job in every way, etc. If the Musk Administration does not want to do that, better to let the government fall, collapse and go extinct on Congress’s terms before the Musk Administration can steal everything in it in a controlled Musk Administration controlled demolition.
Let the Democrats shut down the government and if their conditions for letting it re-open are not met, let it stay shut down and go extinct, and then we can all have a naked power struggle over who rules what-comes-next.
If the Democrats don’t do that one last final Hail Mary Pass thing, then they will indeed be as useless and irrelevant as so many people have said they already are.
Almost forgot: folks thought this was a joke a couple decades ago: but apparently he wasn’t joking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJeFrqBJF6E
Actually, it wasn’t a joke. Carlin nailed it.
Indeed. I like to half-joke that one of the most brilliant political analysts from the US was a comedian who never graduated from high-school. But that’s no joke either
Of course there’s another way to ” Save Social Security” as well. That way is through “means testing”.
Means testing means that if you have a house and a car and you apply for social security, you have to sell your house and live in your car. When you have spent all your house-sale money down to zero and the car is all you have left, then you can get some social security benefits.
And that’s what ‘means testing’ means.
Really no different than Medicaid today. You have to drain down all your bank accounts, investments, and any other savings vehicles to less than $5000 combined total before you qualify. You get to keep your house until you die but all expenses incurred over the duration of being covered by Medicaid are claims against your estate.
in my heart of hearts, and for all my working life, i never really expected SS to be there for me.
too many powerful folks in both parties swallowed peterson institute’s drivel, for too long.
and after my almost 7 year slog through the disability part of SS…4 times from scratch, until my “Work Credits” went away and i was no longer eligible….that feeling is just stronger.
i’ll be 56 this year…Tam’s tiny ass teachers pension runs out in just over 2.5 years.
and while i literally work all the dern time…i make very little money, and havent had a regular job since 2006…due to my frelling skeleton.
i havent been able to get a straight answer from anyone as to whether regular SS, when i turn 62, also has these “work credits”, that go away if one has to “retire” early like i did.
last year, i finally broke down and had another go at SSA website…had to snail mail birth cert, TDL, ss card, etc…and then they were supposed to send me a log in code, or something…time sensitive, of course…but it only arrived in my mailbox a full month after it expired,lol.
so i continue the infrastructure projects, as best i can…so i can at the very least feed myself, and maybe make a lil bit of money going forward.(gourmet tamales and lamb pasties/handpies will be the first when this bar kitchen is done)
like others have indicated, the farm is my retirement fund.
if SS ends up being there, for me…great.
if not, as usual, i’ll muddle through.
Personal experiences with SS admin here, comparing service in 2002 with service this past summer.
I made a snap decision in 2002 to ‘retire’ at 62 feeling that time spent with my grandchildren was more beneficial to society than my ‘paid’ work. ( I did continue with part-time, seasonal paid employment.)
So, I walked into my local SS office, took a number and in about 10 minutes was ushered into the office of an employee. I gave him my personal information, he banged away on his computer, pulled up my entire work history since 1960, and said, ‘looks good, we’ll send you a check next month.’ And, I have been receiving a check every month, without fail, first paper, then direct deposit. (Thank you, I guess, to that shadowy department at Treasury that somehow sends out those SS checks every month to millions of retirees, the one in which the Musk bros are mucking about. Those blood-sucking federal employees that do nothing but ….. keep the hidden machinery of the federal government running ….. they’re the frantically-paddling duck feet under the smooth above water majesty of the Treasury.)
Fast forward to the present. My husband died last July. He was not currently receiving a SS check, because he wanted the amount to build up. So, I went down to my local SS office, took a number, waited in a depressing space, no SS employees in sight, for over an hour, no one moved, left. Called the SS 800 number for an appointment and received a telephone appointment time …. 6 weeks hence.
……. 6 weeks later, did get the telephone call from SS, and talked with a real person. He wanted a marriage certificate. The original. (NB. The SS receives all death certificates from the originating agency. I did not have to provide one.). Searched through files, found original marriage certificate, dropped it off … well, had to take a number, wait for an hour, and then dropped it off.
Silence. For almost two months. Called a couple of times and left a message. “Do I need to provide additional information, etc?). Signed up on SS website. Cryptic messages that SS were ‘working on my claim.’
December, after one last frantic call to my contact at SS, a large amount miraculously appeared in my bank account.
Thankful that I did not need that additional money to pay my rent or buy food. And, perhaps, the SS crew were giving priority to people who did. I like to think that. I have the feeling they are just short-staffed, but have no data to back that up.
I’m very happy that you were not in desperate straights until all those situations worked pout. And you enjoyed the priceless time with your grandkids.
It helped my mother get by when she was raising the three of us kids after my father had left and was killed.
It disgusts me beyond words that this system, as flawed as it may be, is being wrecked beyond repair.
Is this author the same Nancy J Altman who was Alan Greenspan’s assistant on the Social Security commission in the early 80s that dramatically raised taxes on workers and cut their social security benefits, all under the guise of “saving” the program?
The same Nancy J Altman who wrote a puff piece in 2016 about Obama’s “historic social security legacy” after his plan for a “grand bargain”, partnering with the GOP to gut social security failed miserably and during the 2016 campaign Obama began pretending that he actually wanted to expand social security once Trump outflanked the Dems from the left on this topic?
Dont get me wrong, Trump and Musk would definitely gut social security if they could, but Nancy seems like just another Democrat opportunist to me.
Woah, comment volume indicates this hits a nerve.
However, only if you segregate your spending by which pocket your dollars come out of does SS get paid from a trust fund. it’s all ordinary state spending, full stop.
I understand resenting social security. Brings to mind the classic Simpsons bit where grandpa as a young man is griping about paying into it, fast forward to the present and he’s griping about there not being enough.
I don’t expect social security to exist (or if it does, to be worth much) by the time I retire. But while it does exist it’s a good thing, and I don’t have a choice about paying into it besides.
JACOBIN´s take on the same problem
Branko Marcetic
Donald Trump Is Launching an Assault on Social Security
Despite his previous rhetoric to the contrary, it’s clear that Donald Trump is trying to finally be the one to successfully carry out the long-standing GOP goal: destroying Social Security.
https://jacobin.com/2025/03/trump-musk-social-security-cuts
“(…)
Trump told voters he “want[ed] to keep Social Security intact” while “they want to cut it very substantially, the Republicans.”
Fast-forward nine years, and Trump has become just another Republican president launching an assault on Social Security.
(…)
Trump made the claim a major part of his address to Congress this past week, where he said there were “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program.”
(…)
This claim is such nonsense that it’s been repeatedly and widely debunked, including by Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy.
(…)
Reagan laid the groundwork for these attacks on the program by incessantly claiming that “waste, fraud, and abuse” were rife in government programs
(…)
Reagan was far from the only one. Here’s Bill Clinton talking about the “fraud and abuse” in Social Security by prison inmates, a crackdown he predicted would save a paltry $2.5 billion over five years (at a time the national debt stood at more than $5 trillion)
(…)
Or look at the various budgets of lifelong Social Security hater (and massive hypocrite) Paul Ryan
(…)
Or Rand Paul, who has made dismantling the program his life’s goal
(…)
Trump and his people are cutting Social Security as we speak, only doing it in a way that is less obvious, headline-grabbing, and likely to draw pushback.
(…)
one plan is reportedly to simply redirect more people to call centers instead.
(…)
But it will also wreak havoc on program benefits themselves, with a study finding that Reagan’s very similar workforce reduction in the 1980s led to nearly 80,000 eligible people not getting the benefits they were entitled to (out of a beneficiary population nearly half the size of today’s).
(…)
A recent Washington Post report, based on the testimony of SSA employees, painted a picture of the chaos that Trump’s cuts have already created
(…)
phone wait times increasing by hours, delays in processing retirement and disability claims, and SSA offices unable to pay bills, hire interpreters and medical experts, or fix mold
(…)
Musk, Trump, and the people around him are launching an attack on Social Security by stealth,
(…)
their method is to plunge the program into artificially induced dysfunction
(…)”
I enjoyed reading the comments. More than normal people want to know… https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TR/2024/tr2024.pdf
If social security were regulated like a private life insurer selling annuities, it would be in receivership. Benefits must be covered by reserves, enough to pay the benefits. In addition, the insurer is required to hold capital, referred to as surplus.
With SS there is no company. There are no reserves. There is no capital. Its has no marketing expenses. No agents. No commissions. No advertising. It receives cash from mandatory payroll taxes. It pays benefits according to a schedule. There is a buffer fund to track payroll tax above benefits and track benefits above receipts. it is minuscule compared to a fully funded insurance reserve for those benefits.
The good news is that it annual revenues are about 5% of GDP. And the estimated shortfalls are 1-2% of GDP. Hypothetically it could be balanced with no tax or benefits save a 20-25% across the board benefit decrease. 1-2% of GDP is a big number, but not enough to deliberately step on the third rail. In part, the imbalances are due to demographic changes…but they wont go on forever. The reason I call a potential deep haircut good news is that it cant become insolvent or bankrupt because it isn’t a business. If it were held to the same standards as a private insurer, it has always been bankrupt. If they couldn’t change anything about revenue or benefits-this would be the worst concievable outcome…how do you explain paying out less than you take in? Meanwhile there are all sorts of small adjustments that could reduce imbalances. What about SS taxes used for medicare? https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/taxbenefits.html#:~:text=Under%20legislation%20enacted%20in%201983,jointly%20with%20incomes%20over%20%2432%2C000.
How bad a deal is it anyway?
I personally think it is a reasonable deal
1. It is backed by the US Treasury, the world’s reserve currency.
2. It is inflation adjusted.
3. No exclusions for war or force majoure
4. Non profit.
5. Cant lose it in a lawsuit, cant sell it to JG Wentworth
6. A $2000/month benefit might cost $400,000 for an inflation protected annuity.
7. A retirement portfolio generally has a low risk, fixed income component. You can reduce/skip bonds, and treat SS as if it were a pretty good bond.
8. They toss in a disability policy, which you would never get around to buying.
9 Survivor benefits
As far as cutting some operating expenses, even if it were 100% efficient 20 years ago, you could process all the basic transactions on an iPhone or an nvidea chip. There must be some fat in the system. And they have a ‘not bad’ online system. Even the elderly can use the internet, no? It’s maybe a couple $billion, so is it worth a look? I can’t get worked up one way or another.
As far as the larger issue…I would prefer Trump to be working on his golf game. And Musk impregnating some of his wives.
I would like to see both making license plates.
Ah I am probably too late to add to the conversation. However I will. From this vantage point days away from 82. I remember when I first filled out the information sheet for
social security. The memory was is so clear and I was so young and I had just read George Owell’s 1984. The directions about the treatment of the importance of the social security number were so explicit about keeping it private and that it was your number. I thought
I don’t want to be a number and I’m not ever going to need that little bit of money away.
So, in in my working history until 2005. I changed the number. This was discovered when
Homeland Security ,which was recently formed, discovered the irrelevance of the number
and called fraud. At the time the real agent and other could not understand why I would do
such a thing. Though I still do, I now understand how even $1,000.00 a month at this age is a boon. I hope this institution is able to endure and we are all able to work for it’s permanence.
I just have to say one more thing. The instruction about privacy and it being My number
led me to believe that it was my business and if I changed it,it was my affair. I never
thought about the fraud aspect of it. This sort of thing didn’t enter my mind but the culture
was different and I was extremely ignorant and I find continue to be.