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President-Elect Donald Trump's Tax Cut Proposals Come With Unforeseen Consequences for Social Security​

By Sean Williams – Jan 4, 2025 at 3:44AM

For more than eight decades, Social Security has been providing a financial foundation for aging workers who could no longer do so for themselves. Even though the average retired-worker benefit for 2025 is estimated to be a modest $1,976 per month, Social Security income has played a key role in dramatically lowering the senior poverty rate in America.

Despite the undeniable importance of Social Security for many of its nearly 52 million retired-worker beneficiaries, this leading program is in trouble. Although it's in no danger of going bankrupt or becoming insolvent, its existing payout schedule, including cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs), doesn't appear sustainable.

Strengthening Social Security will require action by our elected officials, including President-elect Donald Trump.

The unfortunate problem for current and future beneficiaries is that not every idea proposed by our elected officials is positive for Social Security.

Social Security is in a $23.2 trillion (and growing) financial hole​

In January 1940, the Social Security Administration mailed out the first-ever retired-worker check. Every year since this initial payment, the Social Security Board of Trustees has released a report outlining the current financial health of the program, which allows anyone to see how income is collected and where those dollars end up.


More importantly, the annual Trustees Report provides forward-looking estimates concerning the health of Social Security that are based on a number of dynamic variables, including fiscal and monetary policy as well as demographic shifts. Ongoing demographic changes, such as rising income inequality, a historically low U.S. birth rate, and a more-than-halving in net legal migration into the U.S. over the last 25 years, have played a key role in Social Security's crumbling financial foundation.

For 40 years, every Trustees Report has cautioned that Social Security was contending with a shortfall in the long-term (75-year) funding obligation. In simpler terms, the Trustees believe that income collection in the 75 years following the release of a report would be insufficient to cover outlays, including COLAs. As of 2024, this cash shortfall has reached a staggering $23.2 trillion.

What's even more worrisome is that benefit cuts may be just eight years away. The 2024 Trustees Report estimates the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund (OASI), which is responsible for paying benefits to retired workers and survivor beneficiaries each month, will exhaust its asset reserves by 2033.

If the OASI's asset reserves are fully depleted, sweeping benefit cuts of up to 21% may be necessary to support payouts (inclusive of COLAs) through 2098 without the need for any further reductions.
 
A Japanese woman, recognised as the world's oldest person by Guinness World Records, has died aged 116.

Tomiko Itooka died in a nursing home in the city of Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, according to officials.

She became the oldest person in the world after Spain's Maria Branyas Morera passed away in August 2024 at age 117.

"Ms Itooka gave us courage and hope through her long life," Ashiya's 27-year-old mayor Ryosuke Takashima said in a statement.
 
Social Security - One of the main battle cries of the left. How did it work out this past election?

Social security has been and always will be an issue. And folks continue to get paid. Fake news.
 
Courageous woman!! One of the few to say the emperors naked, We salute you!!!

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Give it time...The press...unions...political opponents...... Immigrants (replace Jews) all will be dealt with!!! MAGA!!!!

Anyone who thinks the U.S. is immune to this....THINK AGAIN.

History is repetitive!!

We need a world war and a viscious germ to wipe the plague homo sapiens from the earth and give something else a chance up at bat.
 
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