America is getting older, rapidly, and that simple but powerful fact is prompting us to rethink everything from retirement housing and consumer technology to our collective ideas about who is or isn’t sexy.
But the biggest age-related change – one that figures to touch most Americans’ pocketbooks – is currently projected to reach an inflection point in exactly 10 years.
By 2033, according to a recent report from trustees who oversee Social Security, the number of Americans who are old enough to collect from the program will be so big, and the pool of working-age people paying for it will be so stagnant, that the program’s biggest trust fund will run dry.
Social Security won’t be flat broke (it’ll still be getting revenue from active workers) but unless big changes are enacted – either as benefit cuts or higher payroll taxes or some combination of the two – the pay-as-you-go program won’t be able to make full payments to retirees who have earned checks.
In their open letter to the U.S. Senate, dated March 31, Social Security’s trustees wrote:
“Moreover, we project that the reserves of the (Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance) Trust Fund will be depleted … during 2033, and only about 77 percent of benefits scheduled in current law will be payable at that time if no legislative action is taken.”
For people who collect Social Security – even the outliers who have other sources of money to live on beyond their government check – the idea of possibly getting less, even a decade in the future, already strikes a nerve.
“If that happens, I’ll be, well, I don’t want to say it in mixed company, but I’ll be upset,” said 91-year-old Ivan Anderson, an Arizona resident who was visiting Tustin earlier this month.
“It’d be bait and switch.”
Actually, as dire as the warning was, it’s not unexpected. Questions have been raised about Social Security almost since the day President Franklin…
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