Not exactly. I believe SS started to "withdraw" money from the $2.9T trust fund in 2021 as incoming SS taxes became insufficient to pay all benefits. The current estimate is that the trust fund will be exhausted in 2033, at which time benefits will need to be reduced by about 20% as that is all the incoming SS taxes will support. As you pointed out, this is fixable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MartinSE
A couple points on this thread:
SS will not suddenly run out of money. The plan is to ramp down payments as they have to dip into the trust, which is expected to start in 10 or 20 years. It is a "simple" problem to fix, but politicians don't want to fix it because it is a voting issue they can rant about. Fixing would simply require an increase in the amount of income your contribution comes from, increase the maximum contribution of each worker, or increase the percentage deducted. All have been proposed, all of any would postpone the problem indefinitely.
Second, inflation happens. It always has it aways will. It is normally blamed on the administration with it starts up - that doesn't mean they caused it. Inflation historically lags policy. In this cycle it has been predicted for years, meaning it is way over due. Some (me included) believe it is the way the inflation cycle was delayed that resulted in it being worse than "normal". I don't have a doctorate in economics, so I can't say. We just are still dealing with COVID and it's impact on society and economy. Anyway, I do believe that as long as our (the world's) economy is based on growth, there will be recessions and inflation cycles. We need a new economic model that is based on no growth.
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