The nonpartisan budget watchdog, revisiting one of its favorite subjects, found that Americans retiring this decade are on track to collect, in the form of entitlements, about 133% of everything they and their employers paid in taxes, measured in present-value dollars. Strip out the employer match, and the return nearly doubles: Roughly 265% of what workers put in themselves. A median-wage retiree in 2027 will collect about $730,000 in lifetime benefits on combined contributions of less than $200,000. The math holds together because today’s payroll taxes are covering the gap. Who pays those taxes, and who is retiring and collecting? Largely millennials and baby boomers, respectively.
In nominal dollars, the gap is even more dramatic. A median-wage worker retiring in 2027 can expect about $730,000 in lifetime Social Security benefits, compared with less than $200,000 paid in taxes by that worker and their employer combined, according to CRFB. Benefits outpace total taxes paid after just six years of collecting. They outpace the worker’s own direct contributions after only three.
The consequence is a financing cliff that’s now closely dated. Social Security’s retirement trust fund is projected to be depleted in 2032, with the combined retirement and disability trust funds exhausted by around 2033 or 2034. After that point, according to the SSA Trustees Report, incoming payroll taxes alone would cover only about 78% of scheduled benefits—triggering an automatic, across-the-board cut of roughly 22% unless Congress intervenes before then.
The promise of retirement for Millennials is just a mirage. Conservatives keep sabotaging social security even though it has worked for 3 generations.
Their own graph illustrates how bullshit their own argument is:
In the text they are comparing taxes without interest at “less than $200,000” (aka as $197.000 or “almost $200.000” if the author weren’t a ghoul) with benefits without interest at $730.000, without mentioning interest/inflation adjustment at all. Since taxes were paid decades before the benefits will be received, their accumulated interest is going to be much higher, which is illustrated well by the graph.
If the graph can be trusted, then with interest the break even point of contributions/benefits happens at 82 or 83 years of age. The usa life expectancy is 79 years. So according to their own data, the average boomer will have contributed more than they will receive. And that is with the current regressive taxation scheme, where high earners contribute less.
But I believe the GOP have been "borrowing " money from Social Security hence why there won’t be anything for future generations. For fuck sake I might as well die if thinking going live on it. The average baby boomer is not living on their SS. Also got letter in 2010 telling me I would be eligible to collect when 72, fucking 72 years old. I suppose to work until I am almost dead? Fuck that.
Time fucking cull some billionaires.
Yeah interest and inflation both crap on this, I’d think. There are many other ways to shit stir about the majority of the boomers but this one is weak