The future of Social Security affects everyone in this country, and the program will likely change drastically in the next six years. Yet most people have little or no idea what’s involved or why. If they don’t get engaged, they will end up as mere spectators — or victims.
Should we raise taxes to fill the $29 trillion funding hole? If so, which taxes should we raise and on whom? If not, should we cut scheduled benefits?
And if so, which benefits should we cut and for whom? And if neither, please explain where you purchased the magic wand you apparently want to use to make the program solvent again. **Read:**Social Security’s fate — and your benefits — are in the hands of the candidates elected this year Don’t Short Yourself offers weekly money tips to help you earn it, stack it and grow it. I would like to receive updates and special offers from Dow Jones and affiliates.
I can unsubscribe at any time. Among the many disservices President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have done to this country was spreading the lie that there was some third option, besides higher taxes or lower benefits, that would come from eradicating vast amounts of “waste, fraud and abuse.” Last year they aggressively pushed the fiction that huge sums were being spent on fraudulent benefits paid to dead people or illegal immigrants. These stories, comforting fairy tales for the simple-minded, were completely untrue.
Those who believed them will cling to their conspiracy theories. When the math proves them wrong, perhaps they will assume that even the people who make calculators are part of the conspiracy. For everyone else, AARP, the organization and lobbying group representing older Americans, has just weighed in with an important contribution, albeit one that is still far from the last word.
AARP argues that one of the biggest reasons Social Security is in a financial mess is not because seniors are living too long or getting too much money, or because Americans have been having too few children, but because the nature of the economy has changed in ways the program’s planners did not anticipate. Back in the early 1980s, when Social Security was put on a sound financial footing by the bipartisan Greenspan Committee, about 41% of U.S. gross domestic product was subject to the 12.4% Social Security payroll tax, AARP reports. Today, thanks to big changes including automation, rising corporate profits, stagnant wages and increasing income inequality, that figure has tumbled to 34%.
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