I don't think it will go away, but, it has been seriously mismanaged by the government. It has been changed from it's original intent. It was never for everyone. It was for the poor, for those with no access to a pension. It was a portion of everyone's income to be held back for those who had no way to sustain a retirement, those who must work till they died. Wealthy people, people with pensions, weren't originally going to get a social security payment. Somewhere along it's course, the politicians decided "if you paid into it, you would get a check", considerable increasing the payout for the program. Eventually with people living longer, less people contributing compared to those receiving benefits, there will have to be changes. Maybe a "means based" scale for payout? If you have a 401 or a pension that pays part of your retirement, SS might be reduced. It is one of the 3rd rails of politics, nobody will talk about the elephant in the room because they will be crucified if they do. I don't think there will be any change in the program until it becomes a crisis.
@Roadsterrider Over time dismantling Social Security will take care of itself. All one needs to do is leave every payment as they are, then devalue the currency through inflation until all it will buy is a small loaf of yesterdays bread..😷
Yes, it is. A lot of administrations, starting back with Kennedy, have "borrowed" money from SS, and have neglected to pay it back. Add to that providing benefits to persons that never paid in, or other boondoggles, all reasons why the fund will dry up eventually until something is done.
Social Security is the ONLY federal program providing income to the elderly. The Musk-Trump administration would like to steal the money in Social Security to give the very wealthy a huge tax cut. Musk called it a "Ponzi scheme", which is a vile lie.
Social Security is an income-transferring trust fund. People pay into it all their working lives, then collect its benefits when they retire. It is also income for the seriously disabled. Without it millions of seniors will be left totally destitute, literally end up homeless. If that happens it's time to raise hell.
@badminton Musk is almost correct in calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, by definition..The nature of a Ponzi scheme means that new newer contributors account for the dividends of older contributors sooner or later you run out of money because there arent enough new contributors. All those conditions will be met.. But in this case because the government over successive administrations have failed to apply the contributions to the schem, syphoning them off to other purposes and to feed corporate providers.😷
@whowasthatmaskedman An absolutely accurate description of the system. I put a little less than the 6.2% withheld from my pay, into a 401K, I have maintained the 401 for 25 years, it is already going to give me more money in retirement than social security. If the money sent to the government had been invested as promised, there would be a huge surplus in available funds for benefits.
The system will not be taken away as such. Thats not how these things are done. It will be underfunded and understaffed in operations called "fat trimming" so that it continually services less people, tending to less of their needs until it ceases to be in practical terms. but is still on the books, so that the government can claim it isnt ignoring it..😷
@BohemianBabe I commented on another post that we were going to lose social security and middle class people were already losing their 401k’s, and that red baron guy whose profile pic is a green shirt replied that there’s no proposal in Congress to eliminate social security and rich people are losing more money from 401k’s than the rest of us and said I don’t know what I’m talking about.
@Patriot96 It seems to be hard for them. All they can talk about is 100+ year old recipients which, as has been repeatedly pointed out to them, is a default problem with far out of date COBAL data systems and taking a meat axe to offices and staffing so people -- particularly elderly and disabled with a variety of accessibility issues -- cannot interact with them and they don't have the resources to better screen recipients and applicants.
