Social Security is already highly progressive with lower income earners getting way more than their lifetime contributions would justify and higher earners / contributers getting less. I’ve spent the last 30 years as a financial advisor and have worked with lower income earners that saved and those that spent every dime and more. I’ve seen people that between child tax credits and earned income tax credits get a $7,000 to $10,000 income tax “refund”. Did they save any of it? a great many of them simply spent it. Many of them also get housing subsidies, food stamps and medicaid healthcare. Even though the tax credit are multiple times larger than their and their employers’ Social Security contributions, they still get credit for contributing. People need to take more personal responsibility.
Once you reach full Social Security age, there are no restrictions on how much you can make. It only applies if you take Social Security early like at 62. The only thing to remember is you will pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on what you make.
Not just for seniors. Those on disability are also struggling to make ends meet.
It sounds like you are more worried about your own taxes going up than the broken social security system being fixed and the millions of seniors who can barely afford to live.
There are other ways to increase the Social security funds without raising taxes. The system has been broken and mis managed for a long time. The Billions of dollars in the fund SHOULD be making money! Imagine what a good investment firm could do with that money to make it increase. Many avenues that money can be used/managed to increase it. Many ways it can produce interest.
The amount given right now to seniors does not meet the average standard of living. The increase given yearly is less than the incraease in costs of goods every year. People pay into this every paycheck their entire lives. It’s not an entitlement.
We can do much better to take care of our seniors and can do it without raising taxes. It seems pretty cold and calous of you to say, It’s their own fault, let’s just kick our seniors to the curb then.
The payments should be equal or more than the standard average cost of living. Factor in average rent or housing cost, food, utilities, car, insurance, medical, gas, clothing etc. and should be 10% on top of that for savings/unforseen expenses. at a minimum. That is what the plan was initially set up for. It has been grossly mismanged and needs to be fixed!
Agreed, I was given 424.00 in 1991 and now make 962.00 in 2025 nowhere near what one needs to live. If my wife didn’t work as a secretary only making 35k I’d be out on the street.
Susan,
You make an excellent point that I should include future projections in my post. I appreciate your response but have some counterpoints.
- Elon Musk estimates that DOGE may be able to save/cut $1 Trillion to $2 Trillion dollars in spending by the end of 2026. Even though these are, hard to believe numbers, let’s take the mid-point and say they will save $1.5 Trillion. If 100% of that savings went towards reducing the debt that will eventually cripple our country, it would take over 20 years to eliminate the debt. I do believe that paying Social Security benefits will be prioritized over completely eliminating the debt. That being said, I am very skeptical that future administrations will not invade that money and spend it on new initiatives.
- There is another issue that I don’t see much reporting/posts on. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, interest rates have been at historic lows. This has allowed us to enjoy historically low interest payments on our debt. That is over. The amount of interest we will be paying on new bonds is likely going to be 2.5X - 3X what we have had for the past 15 years.
- Tariffs may create an additional revenue source, however, it is not currently possible to quantify those numbers. Also, it is likely that they will reduce corporate profits and corporate tax revenues.
- I am an avid reader and do my best to follow information regarding income taxes because of my work in finance. A flat tax has not and will not be introduced, nor is it proven to raise revenues.
- The deaths of Boomers, again, will take 20 years or longer. This does not justify raising benefits today.
- I have no idea where this statement about the US “repatriating” gold comes from. The US has no claim to gold that is held by individuals or other governments. Why would you ever believe that to be true? Also, if the US were to become the only holder of gold, what would make the price rise to $42? In order for the price to rise to that level there would either need to be a spike in demand or a significant reduction in supply. Neither of those would appear out of thin air given your scenario (which isn’t legal or likely).
- You left the only remaining false story that is being passed around. When the US government establishes a crypto strategic reserve, the prices will skyrocket and we can pay off the debt with it. Crypto is worthless and will eventually plunge to zero. Give me a reason why that isn’t the case.
Truthfully, I prefer your version of things. No US debt, higher retirement income for US citizens, and the elimination of fraud and waste from the government. It sounds nice but there is no easy solution. We need to cut spending and limit social programs in order to survive.
Mr. Widdison,
You are 100% on point, I don’t want to pay more in taxes. Also, I do not believe that social insurance or welfare programs benefit the country. I am happy to pay taxes to support fellow citizens that are unable to care for or support themselves. This does not include people who have been physically able to work and generate income for themselves but made the conscious decision to not save part of that income towards their own retirement or to not seek employment.
I also don’t understand how anyone wants to continue to support a program in our country that does not work. If we can look at basic math and simple data we find that, regardless of what we want or what our opinion is, the program does not work and we should take steps to eliminate it.
We have a system where we collect less revenue than we pay out in benefits. Also, due to demographics, we will see the number of active participants grow from 17% to 22% of the population. At the same time the worker to beneficiary ration will decline from 3.7 to 2.3. You could double the payroll tax and eliminate the income ceiling and it wouldn’t solve the problem (but it would hurt the economy).
I understand why people will think I am harsh, selfish, or uncaring. That is OK. What people don’t seem to understand is that no one is coming to save them. We can only rely on ourselves and if you decided to spend your money rather than save it, that is a YOU problem.
I’m new to the conversation and haven’t read all of the remarks, but I just want to say this. I’ve been forceably paying into Social security and Medicare for over 43 years. It’s not an entitlement. It’s basically a retirement plan. The United States government has been mismanaging my money for that time. I want to retire in a couple of years. I want my money back and I don’t want to be forced to pay for Medicare. If you work and contribute in this country, you are penalized. If you get yourself addicted to meth or any other opioid, you can find a doctor who will declare you fully disabled, get a decent living income and free healthcare because you refuse to contribute, not to mention just coming into this country illegally. I’ve paid for the benefits and I want to receive them.
This shouldn’t be a discussion on how to fix Social security, but who to hold accountable and how to get our money back.
Andrew…my replies are in italics…
Elon Musk estimates that DOGE may be able to save/cut $1 Trillion to $2 Trillion dollars in spending by the end of 2026. Even though these are, hard to believe numbers, let’s take the mid-point and say they will save $1.5 Trillion. If 100% of that savings went towards reducing the debt that will eventually cripple our country,
It appears, with the statement you make, that you have reduced the entire effort of “draining the swamp” down to a 2-yr audit by DOGE to identify waste, fraud, and abuse, with a hard stop at 2026. Then you took that number, extrapolated it out, and present it as DOGE being an unworkable alternative to eliminating the debt (which was never a suggestion in these posts). DOGE is only one of many moving parts. Can it reduce debt: Yes. Can it do as you presented and pay off the entire debt. No. This does not discount DOGE’s effort in any way, even though you phrased it that way.
it would take over 20 years to eliminate the debt. I do believe that paying Social Security benefits will be prioritized over completely eliminating the debt. That being said, I am very skeptical that future administrations will not invade that money and spend it on new initiatives.
You are making an inference that, based on corruption and waste of the past administration, that administrations following Trump will behave in the same fashion. Although you took the past and the future into account, you dismissed the present – being, the current revelation of massive fraud and waste revealed to the American People, in such a disruptive and offensive mass presentation, that this is and will steer the course of History going forward. To dismiss what has transpired in the past month as “merely an audit and a handful of savings” is to suggest not having a clear understanding of what is truly happening in America. The Democratic party will be lucky to survive this – entire countries may fail over this. No, this will certainly not be “business as usual” after Trump’s term. You do not need to be skeptical in this regard.
There is another issue that I don’t see much reporting/posts on. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, interest rates have been at historic lows. This has allowed us to enjoy historically low interest payments on our debt. That is over. The amount of interest we will be paying on new bonds is likely going to be 2.5X - 3X what we have had for the past 15 years.
In 2008 the dollar was stronger than other countries around the planet, and much stronger than it is now. Interest rates are a function of currency strength (ie: currency demand and the velocity of money). When the dollar is in demand, the interest is low, when it is not, more interest must be paid to offset that demand weakness. Since 2008, our government has been “USAID-ing” (new verb here) trillions in corrupt payments, so naturally the interest rates are going to go up, because there is an extremely large amount of newly created money out of thin air (authorized by Congress, on this mountain of new spending, fraud, and waste). The interest rates are going up, as you say, for the following reason: the dollar is becoming worthless. In 1913, the purchasing power of a dollar was $1. Today it is approx. 3 cents (relative). Congress is in charge of spending – Congress did that, in collusion with the privately owned Federal Reserve. You see, the Federal Reserve has a system that intentionally holds an inflation rate in place (approx 3%/yr) which eats away at the purchasing power of the dollar. Thus, by its very nature, the system depreciates the dollar over time, and since interest rates are a function of dollar strength, then interest rates are also designed to eventually climb to an unsustainable blow-off top, leading to a hyper-inflationary collapse — UNLESS — the system is reset. The system, with its intentionally-designed depreciating dollar, only lasts about 40 years at a stretch before it needs to be replaced. Our last system reset was when we went off the gold standard in the 70s, and replaced by a Petro-Dollar system, based on OIL (instead of gold). As you can see, we are way past due for a reset. If you have been paying attention to unfolding economic details, you will certainly come to the conclusion that we are preparing for another reset, and it will include baskets of raw materials/commodities backing both printed currency and digital currency via blockchain technology. This will form the purchasing power and stable backbone of currency in the new system that is rolling out before our eyes. I know it sounds a bit lengthy, but I the backstory leads up to this point…
We are on the verge of adopting a new monetary system. The worthless dollar is being retired. It is practically ZERO now. What is 1 billion percent of ZERO? A trillion percent? Yes, it is still zero. You see, that is what governments do with their debts – they inflate them away. History is filled with examples of this. And these new debts will not be carried forward onto the new system. So when you say that we need to hurry up and pay off all of our trillions in debt with Federal Reserve I.O.Us. (debt notes), it really doesn’t make sense at this stage of the game, does it? Without opening another can of worms, I will leave it there.
Tariffs may create an additional revenue source, however, it is not currently possible to quantify those numbers. Also, it is likely that they will reduce corporate profits and corporate tax revenues.
I think you may be intentionally trivializing the amount that tariffs would generate. Many people do not even realize that, before we had income taxes, our entire government ran on tariff revenue…thus, funding an entire govt does not sound like “some additional revenue” does it? And yes, it IS possible to quantify those numbers. Being in finance, and me in computer science, we both know that we could develop formulas to derive these calculations based on current import/export numbers, within 1 standard deviation of the estimates. And no, it would not reduce corporate profits as you so, because we all know that any additional costs incurred by corporations are almost always passed on to the consumer (which keeps those corporate tax revenues you mentioned, nearly unmoved).
I am an avid reader and do my best to follow information regarding income taxes because of my work in finance. A flat tax has not and will not be introduced, nor is it proven to raise revenues.
We are both avid readers – it is being demonstrated even now, and like you, I have a bead on politics and finance as well. For instance, when I told you that a “flat national sales tax” is in the works, I didn’t mean a “flat income tax” – I meant a “flat sales tax (ie: a flat 25% on newly purchased items would be such an example. Others may call it by another name to avoid the confusion just presented – it also goes by the name of a “Fair Tax”. And since you are an avid reader, you might notice that bill HR25 has already been created to do just that. As for it not raising revenues to any degree, you may be right; however, this was also stated in conjunction with “national tariffs” and embedded in a provided list of FUTURE items that underscore the disruptive and changing dynamics which significantly impacts our monetary system. It is used as example to show that future actions must be taken into account, and not trivialized or dismissed out of hand as insignificant, leaving only the past for which to form a basis of the future, as you did.
The deaths of Boomers, again, will take 20 years or longer. This does not justify raising benefits today.
Again, you cherry pick a single item out of the list and dismiss all of the others, as if being the sole contribution. Nobody would be foolish enough to raise benefits in 1 week because they believe that an entire generation would be dead in 1 week. This is childish logic and used to diminish a point that the rate of Boomer deaths is increasing at an increasing rate, lograrithmically, and being replaced by a less populous generation, which invariably effects the future date at which the SS budget will be insolvent. In truth, there is no govt SS account, it is all a Ponzi scheme, and the government is lying to you when they give budget insolvency projections, so in essence, you have zero basis in your argument that “we can’t afford it” because you have no foundation on what IS affordable – you have no start or end points, based on these disturbing facts – but we could write pages on this topic and I am not going there.
I have no idea where this statement about the US “repatriating” gold comes from. The US has no claim to gold that is held by individuals or other governments. Why would you ever believe that to be true?
You said that you were an avid reader and in finance, yet you know nothing about countries “repatriating gold” or of “rehypothecated gold” moving through the LBMA and COMEX. It would be hard to carry on this discussion point with you if you are not versed in it. Please do some more ‘avid reading’. Search engine examples below…
HERE…
AND HERE…
You left the only remaining false story that is being passed around. When the US government establishes a crypto strategic reserve, the prices will skyrocket and we can pay off the debt with it. Crypto is worthless and will eventually plunge to zero. Give me a reason why that isn’t the case.
THE SEARCH FOR YOUR ANSWER BEGINS HERE…
Had I started reading and responding to your post from the bottom, upward, I probably would have not bothered to put so much effort into responding to you, simply because you put so little effort into being “an avid reader” as you claim – and as demonstrated.
I think the points ring true and enough time has been invested in this exchange. Do go read some more. You seem stuck in the past, with preconceived false notions of the future. This is not a good place to be, especially for someone claiming to be in “finance”. Good luck with that. And given your indirect and implicit admission to this rear-looking and uninformed mindset you have just displayed in your post, it is hard to take you serious when you give advice on how Social Security or the national debt should be addressed. I think we can wrap this exchange here.
To add to the above, a spouse’s benefits that has passed should be paid fully to the living, legal spouse either in monthly payments or a one-time lump sum payment. If this money was in a savings account or other, it would still be legal and available to the living spouse.
Richard Nixon took US money off dependence on precious metals by executive order.
Yes, it was under Nixon that we stopped seeing gold and silver certificates on our currency – the words simply replaced with the worthless: “Federal Reserve Note”.
Now perhaps we can return to a gold standard via President Trump. 
As a single mother, I chose to work around my childs schedule rather than let the schools and babysitters raise him. I worked nights and always had another part time job. As I aged, doctors encouraged me, due to health issues, to go on disability in my 30’s. Instead I worked. During covid, I lost my job I’d had for the past 35 years. When I filed for my SS, they took the past 5 or 7 years which had 3 years of no employment and struggling, as all my savings was depleted while barely surviving. Now, with $721 a month, I am basically a ward of the state with my benefits. Why should I be punished because I chose my child over a career? I should still get credit for the past 50+ years of SS taxes I’ve paid, not based on 7 years when my body and options were both working against me. If the governmental had taken our money and invested it properly, we would have plenty of money for us seniors to receive a living wage. After all, we paid into it all our lives. If I’d had that money to add to my investments, I wouldn’t be in this mess. But, as usual, the governemt always thinks they can control our money better than we can. Obviously that is false. When people live from welfare to disability to social security, they pay nothing in and get more than I do. I guess I should have joined the system after my divorce and sucked off the system like so many other single moms have done. Instead, I showed my child how to work for a living, instead of being a leech on the system. And I know I’m not the only old granny who feels this way.
Well, government workers don’t have that problem because they get 80 percent pensions. So it is not always the person’s fault. Not to mention, do schools teach investing money, saving, practical things that we need? No. And the average job doesn’t really give you a lot of extra to save for. Not everyone can go to college or have a skill where they make a 6-figure income. SS tells you how much money you put in. If they would give me that money, I could put it in an IRA or 401k and live off the interest. They have stolen our money, sorry, no. We need to be paid back and stop these government pensions. Biden grew government jobs like crazy. Do we really need that many people working for the government? No.
This may be true for ideal circumstances but I know it isn’t true when forced to retire early for medical issues!
Not sure I understand your reply. I don’t know what you mean or maybe you were missing my point. These government pensions need to end because we taxpayers who have no pensions are paying for people who are making almost the same as when they were working off the taxpayer dime so that I now have to work until I am 80. And the government is bloated and we do not need all these people working for the government. Stop the pensions and you will solve the problem. BTW as far as medical issues, we should all be healthy if the government didn’t poison our food, air, and water and tell us that red meat and eggs are bad for us and that margarine is healthy. Then they give us drugs that do nothing instead of telling us the truth about food and about cheap, natural products that can help us when we need it. Like no one should be dying of cancer, for one. Not really sure what your reply meant.
You realize Social Security will run out of funds in 2033 don’t you? So raising the payments will only cause the funds to run out sooner. Unfortunately politicians promote things that hurts social security like abortion, same-sex marriages, and transgenderism. They also allow illegal aliens to collect it. Obviously we should get rid of all these policies and we could do something to help it. With the new tariff revenues reaching record breaking amounts there has been talk about giving each citizen a rebate check. Most people say they don’t want a rebate check. They prefer it be used to pay down the debt so they can pay less taxes in the future. So my idea is to put some of that tariff revenue into the social security fund to at least delay when the fund will run out.
We have been hearing that SS will run out of funds for as long as I can remember. This is just the latest, I have just quit paying attention to these predictions, especially there is little that I can do to change it if it is true.