Stop believing the garbage on social media and what your uninformed friends say. Here are the facts about Social Security.
✔️ Note payroll tax revenue (contributions) and then compare with benefit payments. Benefit payments far exceed FICA payroll tax revenue. That’s a problem.
✔️ Note the change in reserve, a negative $200 billion ($160 combined trust). That’s a bigger problem. It also shows that reserves are being used to pay current benefits. That means Treasury Bonds held by the trust are being redeemed to pay benefits.
✔️ Note the $61.7 billion in interest income. As bonds are redeemed (which started on a regular basis in 2021) and no new ones purchased, interest income will decline.
✔️ Note the trust income of $56.4 billion from income taxes paid on Social Security benefits. Any changes to that taxation reduces the Trust revenue and accelerates the depletion of the trust reserve. This includes the changes made by the OBBBA.
In addition, immigration policy has reduced the payroll tax revenue into the trust by reducing immigrant workers legal and illegal (who pay an estimated $25 billion + a year, but are legally and practically prevented from collecting benefits (they can’t produce the required documentation)
There you have it, nobody stole or misused the funds, interest was always paid to the trust, illegal immigrants pay taxes, but don’t collect benefits and the money held in bonds is being paid back every year.
The problem is simple, more money is being paid in benefits to more people and the revenue that is generated by today’s workers is insufficient and it will get worse in the years ahead.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
In lots of mature retirement plans, the benefit payments far exceed the contributions.
The difference, in private sector retirement plans, is that plan administrators are subject to ERISA fiduciary duties (or are subject to trust law requirements where not subject to ERISA).
ERISA fiduciaries are legally required to manage retirement plans solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries. Key requirements mandate acting with the care of a “prudent expert,” diversifying investments to minimize risk, defraying reasonable administrative expenses and following the terms of the plan (unless the terms of the plans violate ERISA fiduciary duties).
That requires them to invest monies prudently in anticipation of the liabilities. Putting money in Treasury securities, which enabled greater deficit spending to buy votes, ain’t prudent.
Had Social Security been subject to ERISA, Congress would clearly have violated their fiduciary duties.
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Those pension plans have trusts sufficiently large and growing to cover the liabilities.
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exactly, invested long term too!
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Would you want this administration (or any) to have control over $2 trillion invested in the stock market?
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Yes, so long as they were required to act as a fiduciary, comparable to the role of an ERISA fiduciary. Right now, they were only required to act as any other member of Congress, where they could use the trust assets to buy votes.
These are the same guys who have added almost $30 Trillion to our national debt over the past 16+ years. Steward, fiduciary, those are not words I would use to describe Congress.
As Twain once said: “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
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