Source: Town Hall
by Tom Patterson
“Here are the hard truths of our threatening situation with social Security and Medicare. We have a looming major fiscal crisis which no one denies. There are solutions but no politically easy ones and our options get worse with time. Yet every time a working politician suggests considering even mild changes, the formidable senior lobby and AARP erupt in outrage and beat down the hapless reformer. Former allies of responsible reform flee and the status quo Is again preserved. Facts, as they say, are stubborn things. Social Security is by design a mandatory government administered defined-benefit retirement trust, funded by payroll taxes. However the inflows to the trust are insufficient to support the benefits promised and, unlike private pension plans, there is no corpus of funds earning compound interest to make up the difference. Thus the fund will become insolvent in nine years.” (11/10/24)