paying into social security for decades while reading that the math might not even work by the time i get there is such a comforting little adulthood experience 😭 i’m not mad at retirees for taking what they were promised, i just really want to know what exactly my generation is being promised
Sorry, Best we can is electing a demagogue who will steal billions from the goverment and then rig elections so that he, his family, and his disciples can continue to do so in perpetuity.
Remember: Conservatives have spent decades pushing the narrative of "Social Security won't be there when you retire." Their specific goal is so they can kill it off entirely and folks won't get mad about it.
SS is being killed off. Are you mad about that? If not, then the narrative worked.
I’ll know the world is healing when businesses just start giving millenial and newer generations discounts. “Sorry you paid into a system you can’t use, didn’t get to afford a house, lived through multiple recessions, and scraped to get by for your entire life and will never retire. Would you like .50 off your coffee?”
I don’t doubt that data or that zoomers will own less houses than older generations, but I can’t help but wonder if the zoomer number will go up when they reach the age millennials were whenever they bought their house.
Obviously there are progressives of all ages, but it's indisputable that Gen X went hard for Trump by the biggest margin (10 points) of all generations.
I think we are getting pretty close to that point, where eliminating social security will simply be met with a shrug and a reiteration of how we should be focused on how about a dozen trans women might participate in sports.
Social security is like a hose going into a pool with a pump sucking water out
In the worst case, the pool goes dry and only as much water gets pumped in gets pumped out. This is the current scenario with the social security trust fund (pool water) going low
its only a mathematical eventuality under the gimped rules that were put on it like having a cap on income that flows into it. (not the only rule but a major one) rich people need to start paying their fair share in taxes again, let’s Make America Great Again with a great tax rate like when we built the interstate highway system.
china is looping train circles around our crumbling cities (figuratively) and instead of being embarrassed by our horrible representatives the rich convinced enough poor idiots to blame other poor people.
Thank you for taking the time to type this. We spend a lot on our Military, but as a percent it's quite a bit more reasonable. Benefits like Social Security and Medicare are sooooo much more expensive. Not that we can't solve them, but cutting the military spending alone won't make a dent. If I remember correctly, social security is pinned to cost of living, but contribution caps are not. It is irresponsible not to raise more revenue for SS through W2 taxation.
Don’t give into the doomerism. Even the running out of money scenario is 87% payout when they hit the cliff.
It’s also a political nuclear bomb.
It’s always wise to plan for the unexpected, but it’s still highly likely social security exists in much the same form as when you retire…and even if it doesn’t, it is almost impossible to imagine drastic cuts. They’ll tank the economy before that happens, lol
Social security is a pay-as-you-go system. If it becomes overburdened, you just increase the payments into the system.
The only reason it's "on the verge of running out" is because you have cretins in office who keep insisting that increasing the payments is "unfair", mostly because they don't give a shit about old people who aren't independently wealthy.
"Pay as you go" means it's a direct tax transfer from working people to retired people.
I'm a working person and I think it's ludicrous that working people today should pay more and more of their income to support retired boomers.
Raise my taxes if you want and spend on actually important causes like fighting climate change or subsidizing, but transferring more of my taxes to support boomers? Fuck that.
And this is exactly what they want...Boomers, Xers, Millennials, etc. fighting over the scraps, while Billionaires are all busy buying another island. We're making it too easy for them.
The US spent 1.6 trillion on social security last year. The combined wealth of all billionaires in the US in 2025 is like $7 trillion. If you magically confiscated every cent owned by billionaires, we'd back in the same same boat in 5 years.
Sure, tax billionaires more, but that won't solve the fact that in the 40s there were like 20 workers for each social security recipient and now it's almost 2.5 to 1.
And if we did confiscate all the billionaire wealth, spending it on boomers instead of investing it into the future is the dumbest thing you can do with that money.
In any functioning society, the workers subsidize the young and old and the healthy subsidize the sick. Not all boomers are rich, those are also our parents and social security means we don’t find as many dead ones in the street. I ln any case, they haven’t increased workers contributions so the idea that “
working people today should pay more and more of their income to support retired boomers” isnt happening, we’re talking more about removing income caps.
In a "functioning society" the ratio of workers to retirees would something close to 5 or 10 workers to each retiree. Now it's 2.7 workers to 1 retirees and dropping every year. How much money are you expecting to leech from workers to support workers every year? The math doesn't work.
How you raise taxes doesn't matter. If you're gonna raise more taxes, wasting it all on supporting boomers is the dumbest thing you can do with that money. Invest it in the future, not waste it on the past.
It's kind of like they got to spend their retirement twice. Once in the form of their benefits, and once in the form of tax breaks that they voted for which were funded by social security contributions.
Social Security was supposed to be like a forced investment. So where does that investment go when it ends? Are we going to get paid back, or are they going to steal it?
It's not really an entitlement when it's your money you earned from hard labor.
Social Security is forced insurance not investment. It’s guaranteed income in retirement or if you’re disabled. It’s not meant to be like stocks and bonds.
This is what people fail to realize. There is a reason that the generation of baby boomers is blamed for a lot of today's problems. Them, as a voting bloc, have voted in some of the worst politicians in history in terms of both domestic and foreign policy. The forever wars? Wealthy baby boomer politicians voted in favor of that. Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations? Baby boomers. Massive defense spending? Baby boomers. On and on and on. So it goes.
What? Tax rates for Social Security have been 6.2% since 1990. It is also worth noting that they went from 5.08% in 1980 to 6.2% in 1990, precisely when Baby Boomers were at their earnings peak.
Boomers are taking out way more than they put in. Remember when they paid in the recipients were the silent generation. So boomers had to pay considerably less per person to support the payouts for the generation above.
Now that we have a worse ratio of younger generations to boomers. Also life expectancy is going up + boomers hold a much larger share of wealth vs the generations before (a function of restrictive housing policies which inflate the value of the assets they have)
Not when all their voting fucks over their kids and grandkids and future generations of our country. They are voting for themselves and talk endless shit about the generation that is paying for them. Very little sympathy.
It's very simple. Give me back every cent I every paid into Social Security, at a modest 5% compounded interest, year over year. We can then call it even, I'll walk away. I would never dream of expecting the extremely generous lifetime compensations that Senators and Congressmen are 'entitled' to.
boomers taking a cut to benefits so the program can continue to exists should be the first step. Letting one generation knock out all others isnt fair either. Truly the only fair thing is raising taxes on the wealthy, but till money is out of politics that isnt happening.
Right! They paid into the system and they should draw their benefits. Politicians should not have "borrowed" money from Social Security without repaying it (or at all). This post is inflammatory for no reason at all.
According to Elon Musk stated, "Don't worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years. It won't matter." He clarified his view by adding, "You won't need to save for retirement... if any of the things that we've said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant."
They have been saying this my whole life. When I was a kid, it was my parents (boomers) who wouldn't get it. Now it's Gen Y or Z. They always say this--those who want to privatize it.
My mom started collecting this year. She told me when she was in college everyone said social security would run out before they were able to collect, and she thought she would never see a cent until like 10 years ago or something
Its crazy.
Though based on current projections, if nothing changes (increase in the payroll base for SS taxes etc), starting in 2034 the SS payout will be reduced to 78% of the intended value. Not great , but something you can plan for the next 70 odd years after that.
You don’t pay into it like it’s some savings account. It’s just a way to get a country that hates government social programs to accept tax to raise all boats. The program has to be adjusted each year to account for this. Which is why the maximum taxable income is adjusted upward each year.
Tech bros are trying to summon an ancient Sumerian demon in order to introduce a one world government and wipe out 2/3 of the global population in the process. We got scammed.
Boomers are robbing us all the way to the grave and leaving us holding the bag. . . They have consistently voted for economic incompetence to avoid contributing to future generations rather than leaving the world a better place than what they found it like their parents did.
I am mad that retirees are taking what they were promised. Only because they have known for 2+ decades that the Social Security fund needed additional funding but they kicked the can down the road so they can take from the younger generation yet again.
I don’t want to pay more in Social Security tax. I want to the boomers to take less because they didn’t fund the program when it was their tax dollars.
Yeah remove the income cap and start taxing the oligarchs. I give two fucks about someone who worked their entire lives getting a check for 100k. Pennies compared to what trump is stealing or spending in iran
This. These articles keep reading like the PEOPLE are the problem, when it's gross government mismanagement. All of Trump's tax-breaks for the wealthy and corporations are basically putting all the things for the other 300m of us at risk.
Boomers are the problem. They vote for tax cuts everywhere and spit on anyone who needs benefits and cry about the welfare state while being the largest burden, destroying the world around them, and brutally deporting a significant portion of the young labor force needed to help sunset them along into hell. Fuck their money and their property. They can starve with the rest of us.
If younger people actually turned out for elections like older people do, things would be a lot different. Over 70% of Boomers vote whereas 55% of Gen Z did.
In 2024 every single generation shifted percentage points over to voting for MAGA when compared to 2020. Gen Z in particular moved 13 (!) points.
So it's easy to blame things on older people but a lot younger people should be looking at themselves in the mirror when it comes to who they vote for and whether they actually vote.
Why has neither party resulted in gains in wealth for under 40s? 70+ own 30% of wealth under 40 make 6%…the inequality has grown throughout both administrations and corporations have grown from free trade and low wage foreign labor. What has either party done to reduce the use of low wage foreign labor/ imported labor to secure increasing wages and inequality?
The people with no property working multiple jobs to support a welfare class who doesn’t work, holds all the wealth, and needs constant services and products and tax money from us should vote more, I agree.
Yes it’s also opening up to “free and fair trade” with countries who use slave labor and are heavily subsidized from authoritarian government was a bad idea that was never corrected. We gutted working class union jobs and now have Amazon and Walmart instead of American businesses. Why would anyone want to hire an American?
When I’m old they can blame me and I’ll also look out for the strategic interests of the world more than my tactical ones.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in"
What happens to a society when the old men plant surveillance cameras, detention centers, and crippling tax burdens on everyone so they can feel safe from brown people and maintain their home value?
Nobody votes for tax increases on themselves, or approves of building skyrise towers next to their single family house.
It’s up to politicians to balance budgets, spend wisely, tax wisely and make reasonable proposals, and for people of all generations to vote for the ones who do.
Acting like everyone born between 1946 and 1964 has the same personality and is responsible for the nation’s problems is regarded.
I will vote to increase my taxes, while I use every ounce of tax avoidance strategy available. Taxes make all of us safer enable a higher standard of living and overall makes the economy and country wealthier as long as they are invested in the people (sort of like investing in a business.) but I’m not going to hamstring myself when the ultra asset class pays 1% on their income.
And people arguing for SFH zoning don’t even understand what they are arguing for.
If they wanted to increase their wealth, they would vote for mixed use. A developer is going to pay for what that land can become, not what the SFH on top is worth. This is known as RLV and has been proven in actual market conditions.
They mostly are the same. My favorite people on the planet are the small amount of very old people who still care about the world beyond their own (rapidly waning) earthly interests.
Against them are legions upon legions of boomers holding miserly onto their benefits while stripping everyone else’s and only caring about the value of the tomb they’ll never sell while they vote in another rapacious, selfish, entitled boomer to drop a few last bombs on everyone else as they go out the door. They delight in it and they’re the perfect fall guys for younger predators because by the time we can stop them and try and get justice they’ll just be dead.
He’s completely right, social security isn’t a savings account with your specific name on it funded by your contributions. It’s funded by the working age people below them. Boomers barely had to pay into the generation above them while enjoying disproportionately larger payments from the current working generation.
Yes, empty nesters should be expected to sell and move out or pay a premium for destroying the housing market. You’re crying that boomers have the expectation of following a sustainable social contract lmao
Eh, we could complain if we didn’t keep voting for them.
I’m no historian, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the first generation in history where the main-thrust of full adults, people from 25-50, still acted like children, whining for the government they want, while the elderly population 65+, are still calling the shots.
It’s supposed to be that the actual grownups of every generation have the power, and the elderly beg for accommodations from the generation of current grownups.
The idea that the current generation of adults are not only under the thumb of the elderly, but keep voting for elderly candidates… it couldn’t be more absurd.
But if we’re voting for these skeletons, and they write policies that benefit skeletons, you forfeit your right to complain.
That’s actually not true. The word senate literally comes from a word meaning council of elders. Same root as senile. The norm through history is old men holding everyone hostage well after their brains turned to mashed potatoes. Never before has a generation seen such massive life expectancy and wealth growth in their lifetime as the boomers and for the first time now, after they’ve been in power so long, life expectancy is now falling and the system they built has made them so terrified of having to work again and be able to make it through on their retirement they have become almost psychotically greedy. All the younger officials who have made it so far did it against institutional headwinds telling them to sit down every step of the way and saying they were too extreme or something.
America specifically, right now, is greyer than it’s ever been in our history AND the wealth disparity between boomers and everyone else is extremely unnatural. Old people are holding us all fucking hostage and not just Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin.
Seriously, this is some culture war misdirection bullshit. Trying to make us blame the "Boomers" when in fact everyone has paid into Social Security and gets benefits proportional to their contribution.
How about we blame the damn oligarchs who aren't paying their dues? Or the administration that's wasting tax dollars on a war nobody wanted?
Or on said war causing inflation to stay elevated to an extent that the Fed can't lower rates, resulting in higher debt servicing costs, which is a large contributor to the national debt automatically ballooning without any additional spending?
But the benefit is also capped (technically calculated) at the same level as someone making $184k.
It’s not like someone who makes $300k is getting “free extra SSI”. They were only taxed up to $184k, and will be paid out the same dollars as someone who earned exactly $184k.
True, but probably someone with between $300,000 and $3,000,000,000 of income will need social security less than someone making $30,000. So, raising the tax cap allows those people with substantial income to better support their fellow citizens.
Whike I am completely okay with taxing them based on their ability and capping the benefit they receive back later, it would be political suicide to suggest it.
Everyone juat says "REMOVE THE CAP!" without actually thinking to what step 2 is. Because the way its set up now just means removing the cap does nothing and sends the excess compared to right now back to already-rich people.
You need to change the disbursement rules as well, and id love for someone to realistically explain how that passes through the legislative process.
No we are perfectly okay with removing the cap and capping benefits vs reducing everyone's benefits. I make 300k a year. I dont need more ss benefits and I'm fine paying more tax.
Someone who made a billion last year isn't even drawing a salary, so they paid nothing. That also goes for hedge fund managers, law firm partners, medical practice owners, and others who get their income in ways other than a paycheck.
Removing the income cap only impacts those still paying into the system. Not the boomers who are benefiting from the systems oversight. I’m not saying raising the cap won’t help but everyone believing it’s a panacea is naive. Fixing social security is going to be more difficult and complicated than just raising the cap. Plus raising the cap further incentivizes the wealthy to take salary in ways other than ordinary income.
The Social Security administration itself crunched the numbers and stated that eliminating the cap would be a temporary boost and the current deficits would return within five years.
It’s going to take much more than just lifting the cap to solve this. There simply aren’t enough people paying in due to demographics and the people receiving benefits are living much longer than expected. Perfect double whammy.
The Brookings Institute put together a plan for solvency without overall benefit cuts. It’s gonna take the cap being lifted, increasing the payroll tax for everyone, increasing years worked to qualify for everyone, raising the retirement age for high earners and taxing all of their benefits, and ending the dependent retiree spousal benefit to actually fix this. Basically something from literally everyone. No one is going to accept it which is why Congress will wait until the absolute last minute to do this. Which also compounds the problem since the longer they wait the worse the problem gets.
100K? Bullshit. My mom was a military wife most her life & received less than $600 a month SocSec. That’s $7,200.00 a year. So don’t tell me boomers are getting $100K a year. I’ve never met any old timers taking that in. Their SocSec is based on their annual salary inputs and many of the poorest made less than $50K a year. Isn’t Fortune a Republican dog whistle rag just like Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ? Is this admin planning to steal from the elderly too? Wouldn’t reading the Economist or the Financial Times give more objectivity?
To get 100K you need BOTH husband and wife to have worked and paid at the max level for 35+ years. These are the people who are getting the absolute least back relative to what they're putting in.
Considering that less than 1% of individuals get the max benefit, the amount of households who would COMBINE for 100K+ would be far, far less.
In fact, if there were MORE people who were getting the max, the SS trust fund would be at a healthier state, precisely because these people get back so little relative to what they've put in.
What we need are those rich fuckers at the top to put money in from investment returns.
Adding to your point. If you pay the maximum each year, you hit the maximum benefit level well before you have worked for 35 years, although you keep paying Social Security taxes. Also, to get over $100,000 our hypothetical couple will have to wait until they are each over 67 years old to begin drawing. (At 67 their combined benefit would be $99,648 per year).
When boomers started their working lives, benefits were not taxable. Those taxes were imposed in 1983 and raised in the 1990s, so these folks effectively had their benefits cut.
If you remove the cap then the check for the rich is going to be even more than 100k. SS has never been one big bucket. Benefits have always been based on the individual earned income.
There absolutely is a maximum benefit. A simple Google search would show you this. It's currently $5181 a month if you delay until age 70 and have the maximum computable earnings.
If we have the political capital to remove the cap we can also introduce means testing. As trump has shown there are no sacred cows. Pack the courts, redistrict to dilute red voters, increase the size of the house, and arrest every criminal in the GOP.
This. Boomers need to vote alongside the younger generation, not feel threatened their benefits will be taken away. There are lots of reasons the older generation has contributed to the mess we’re in now, but almost every demographic did as well, and twice with this administration. Fund social programs, especially education. Hold criminals accountable. The end.
Regardless of your other statements the comment about Iran is completely false. Social security accounts for 23% of the federal budget or roughly $1.58 trillion. The money spent on the “war” with Iran is peanuts compared to the amount of the budget dedicated to social security.
Except social security isn’t paid by personal savings it’s paid by existing workers, their benefits would be significantly less if it was just a 401k self pay program. Why keep pouring money into an empty pit for boomers who give no fucks about a stable social contract versus investing that money into something useful
Paying a worker, someone’s grandma, to live a dignified life is a much better use of our resources than say, spending trillions in Iran or funneling tax dollars to the trump family
So I've hit the cap in the past few years. The problem with simply removing the cap is you're charging people more for no change in benefit. It's essentially a tax increase on high earners. For that reason, I doubt it would pass. The folks in charge are the folks that would be hit most.
They definitely need to do something. I just don't think it can be done in any single group of people.
You’re charging people more because they benefit from society more. I’d be all for a radical reshaping of our economy away from rent seeking. But I think most of the wealthy would rather not see a revolution. Much easier to just pay their fair share.
Everyone seems to be blaming someone else. It’s the oligarchs, it’s the boomers, it’s the president, it’s the people not having enough babies, etc…..
I can play this game too. I put the blame on sending billions and billions of dollars overseas for basically nothing, and I also blame the immense amount of fraud even within this country.
As someone who is close enough to have casually looked at what I might one day get, I don’t think SS max benefit hits 100k. I read the article
And they’re fast and loose with concrete numbers.
That said I don’t hold out much hope for ever getting anything useful from the program unless I work until I’m 70.
The benefits are earned. So, there would need to be a proportional benefit for any increase in the income cap. To the extent more money is needed to fund social security, there needs to either be an across the board benefit reduction or an across the board FICA increase.
Also, someone making over $100k is certainly not rich, and is no where near the FICA cap.
Or… and hear me out… rather than punishing people earning $250k let’s just stop only adding Medicare tax to wages… all income is the same rate. Preferetial rates for investments and passive income should phase out immediately when your passive income exceeds your earned income.
My personal conspiracy theory is that all of the generational fighting is a psyop. Why go after the ultra-rich for stealing everything when you can just blame Aunt Betty?
It's a little misleading title as it's a combined 100k a year, meaning spouses too. The max you can get per month from SS is $5,181 a month if you start taking it from the age of 70.
Social Security was never designed to pay out for people living 30 years past their retirement age.
It doesn’t pay out 30 years unless you are very fortunate. Most people who collect will die before 30 years, especially if they begin to take it after their earliest year of eligibility.
0.03% of the population lives to 100. To max out benefits you have to retire at 70 or later. Also, the article forgot to mention that SS is partially taxed (up to 85%) as income once you cross the income threshold set in 1984. So that 5,181/month is not actually 5,181 a month. Approximately 0.85 * your benefits * your tax rate is being taken from those benefits. The threshold is $32,000 for this max'd out couple.
That taxable portion of SS is based on your provisional income, which SS only counts 50% towards anyway.
Assuming this hypothetical couple was receiving maximum SS benefits and had no other income, they would pay $0 in federal taxes after the standard deduction.
But it doesn't matter because we can easily fund social security so that he can pay people for living 30 years past their retirement age. The mechanisms are there, it's just the political will that is missing
No one is collecting $100k in social security. If you were at the top of salaries, and wait til 70, the max is $62,172. The majority of people are way collecting less than 1/2 that.
They're assuming a married couple - both still alive and both having been high earners. And it feels like a real penalty for being widowed/divorced/single since the majority of expenses especially post-retirement (like housing) aren't variable.
Not really, the maximum benefit per person is $5181, so $62,172 per person, if they wait until 70. Both people in a married couple getting this is pretty rare.
There isn’t polyamory available for households. I guess we can count Utah, but I’m guessing all parts of a Mormon power quad won’t be earning near the top of the SS thresholds.
A cap on benefits will just result in retirees drawing their social security earlier. There is currently a benefit attached to waiting to age 70 to begin collecting. For a top earner, the max benefit he/she can collect at age 70 is $5,181 per month. (X12=$62,172 per year). If I am married and our maximum SS recovery is capped at $100K we are either going to get a divorce (thereby preserving $24,000 per year) or just start drawing closer to age 65 since there is no longer a benefit to holding off until age 70. So, this measure seems penny wise and pound foolish.
A real solution is to take away the earnings cap for wages. SS should be taxed on all wages and not just everything below $184,500.
Even those people should have an option to opt out for the good of the program. If a social security check is pennies to you, you don't need it. I know you paid into it, but you also paid into insurance and property taxes, but you don't expect that money back.
That's not why. It's because we gave massive tax breaks to rich assholes and the assholes in the White House have absolutely zero fiscal discipline, which dovetails with having a bunch of lapdogs in Congress. No individual Social Security payment makes an ounce of difference.
The biggest problem is law makers are incentivized for doing popular things. Such as tax breaks and maintaining social programs.
They are harmed by doing things that help the country fiscally and harm the people. Such as taxation increases or reduction in benefits.
So which do we think the assholes are going to do? Obviously whatever gets them elected. Even if that means it harms the country fiscally. And that’s exactly what has been happening the last 75 or arguably more years. There’s no incentive to fix it because the fix will piss off voters.
If we had term limits and not have career politicians then they would be less concerned about the next election and do what needed to be done for the country, even if it pissed people off. But that won’t happen. Since congressmen are literally always campaigning.
Within my long unnecessary post, only one thing matters. Politicians are not incentivized to run the country in a healthy manner. Term limits could help that instead of making law based on what would get them more votes.
The people will never say “you know what? Our deficit is too high and our revenue is too low for our spending. We should vote someone in that will tax us more”. Never will happen. Even though it’s what we need.
Almost like forcing my son to eat his peas before he can have ice cream. He doesn’t want to but it’s good for him and he needs to do it.
The point of social security is that it’s not a tax. That’s why it historically has been so well supported. No amount of tax increases will help it and no amount of tax cuts will hurt it. In theory
I'm 68, worked for 46 years, most years I made about 10 percent below the social security cap. Starting social security at age 69, I'd be receiving $52,000 year. The only way I can think that someone could draw $100,000 would be to be a two earner couple who both made close to the maximum and worked to normal retirement age, or later.
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the average social security check this year Is $2,083.
I mean if two people put that much into it over that long a period of time, so what. What is the purpose of it otherwise. Why would you begrudge people receiving the benefits they funded, at levels that actually suck relative to the contributions. Generational warfare nonsense.
The MAX one can draw from SS, waiting to age 70 is 5181....that's not 100K per year - maybe if both are drawing the same. Also the problem is the current administration and republicans, establishment Dems and Oligarchs. Tax the shit out of Oligarchs and SS will be fine
Lawl, no. It's because the Big Beautiful Bill with all its tax breaks for the wealthy was passed, and the wealthy are finding out that tax money pays to maintain aircraft carriers.
Fake news - the max check if one waits till age 70 is $5,181 per month. War is the reason for the debt. SS and Medicare are not funded from the general US budget, they are funded by the SS tax.
Wow if this was 1981 I would be shocked. But dual income barely breaking six figures is not even remotely a flex in 2026 and certainly won't make anyone rich.
The $100K being referred to is not earned income; it's the annual amount of social security a couple could conceivably get in retirement. A retired individual who is clearing $50K+ a year on social security was a very high earner over their career.
I wasn’t referring to income of six figures I was referring to the Social Security benefit for a couple at 100,000+. That would be an addition to their IRA/401(k) and pension. You know, the three legged stool.
I paid into social security for over 40 years, since I was 16. I was told time and again over those years that if I had been able to just take that money and invest it, I would be worth more than twice what I am now. I’m 77 years old and I get about $2,300 a month from Social Security, and I still have to pay taxes out of that.. (That’s about $27k a year in case your math skills are poor) try to live on $27k a year… and then come whine to me. Where do I sign up for this $100,000?
No idea where anyone is collecting $100k per year off social security. Maybe combined with Medicare, but unless I am mistaken, those are two different funds and have different taxes feeding them.
This isn't a problem with any particular group collecting benefits. It's a problem with a certain political party actively working to destroy Social Security and have the general public fighting with each otherwhile they sit back and watch. This is by design and it's been in play since at least the Reagan administration.
Yeah it's not the trillions spent on defense each year it's also not the trillions in tax avoidance from corporations and billionaires it's also not the blatant corruption in politicians who accepted thinly veiled bribes.
Oh sure, go ahead and complain about the national debt and SS recipients in the same breath, while the (quantifiably) most corrupt administration in our country's history pillages our wealth, passes trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy, and wages an illegal war of choice that is economically crippling the working class directly. Very cool.
Kind of misleading headline since they're talking about couples receiving over $100k. The maximum benefit in 2026, if you delayed collecting until age 70, is $5181 per month or $62,172/year. $62k per person isn't that insane in this economy.
National debt is growing because of cheeto head and his warmongers stealing from our country. They fill the pockets of their family members and pac donors while pointing fingers at the elderly recieving the benefits they paid for themselves with hard work. The grifting fingers have borrowed and stolen what Americans worked for and point the grubby finger back at them. Disgusting.
We’re not in debt because of social security benefits. We’re in this level of debt because of Trump tax cuts, tariffs, and wars. Talk about missing the point.
How bout because politicians have been corrupt for generations, passing laws that save their donors billions and spending all our tax dollars and an extra 2 trillion every year on everything but benefiting the populace
Highlights below on ONE plan to save SS (note it goes beyond wages cap to include wealth)
Senator Bernie Sanders' plan to save and expand Social Security centers on the Social Security Expansion Act, which aims to extend the program's solvency for 75 years by requiring high-income earners to pay more into the system.
Key Elements of the Plan
Lifting the Payroll Tax Cap: Applies the Social Security payroll tax to all earnings—including investment and business income—for individuals making over $250,000, leaving 91% to 93% of American households with no tax increase.
Investment Income: It explicitly targets unearned income—such as capital gains and dividends—by subjecting them to the same 6.2% tax rate used for standard payroll contributions above that threshold.
Increasing Benefits: Boosts payouts across the board by roughly $2,400 a year ($200 a month) for recipients.
Improving Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLAs): Updates the formula using the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) to better account for rapidly rising health care and prescription drug costs.
Opposing Benefit Cuts: Vigorously rejects raising the retirement age, reducing benefits, or privatizing the program.
Even if you max contributed every year, the most you would draw from Social Security is a little over $60K. That seems fair. This article is misleading trash.
Social Security is not going broke. Its problems can easily be solved by removing the salary cap.
Lmao. This headline sounds they’re gonna try and turn us on people who earned their social security and are collecting it rather than the oligarchs and the ruling class for destroying it
Exactly!
Their first reference is the CATO institute.
Then they go on to compare the money
put in to the expected total
payout starting in 2027.
What they don’t mention is that the median worker would have $3 million if their payments had been put into the S&P500. And the richer workers would have $4-$5 million.
They’re laying the groundwork for
their next diversionary scape goat.
It’s not the people collecting social security that are the problem - these are people that paid into the system their entire lives and will likely receive from the system far less than what they would have been able to have earned if hey had been allowed to invest the money on their own. Point your anger and your blame where it belongs - at the rich and powerful who have bankrupted this country through their corruption.
not a boomer - but don’t blame them across the board for poor leadership, malfeasance and obfuscation. remove the cap and increase SS tax by 1% and buy another 25 years or so. this looks so much worse in the near future where there will be no middle class funding SS.
Thank you for this. I am a boomer, the very last year to be eligible to join that club. Not taking SS for quite a while. Current plan is to wait until I turn 72. We’ll see.
But $100k a year?? Ok I just briefly read the article. That is really misleading. What they actually say is $100k **per couple**. That’s completely different. Might be a small thing but it’s mighty important to have the right context.
I thought that the max SS benefit was something like $4k per month. It may be a little more but maxing at $50k to $60k per year for an individual is reasonable. However that looks like it’ll be going down because it’s already too late. CBO and a lot of others did that math a couple of decades ago.
What is with all these stupid posts lately trying to convince people any part of SS is a problem. Boomers withdrawing their entitlement isn't the problem. The ridiculous cap is.
That isn't why, to be clear. I enjoy shooting on boomers as much as the next person but I will never blame the recipients of the social safety nets (that we as a society promised them) for receiving those benefits.
We are growing broke because the wealthy don't pay their share of taxes and we waste money on frivolous bullshit like corporate welfare and foreign Wars
Well, us boomers will be dead soon and then the whole system will correct itself. Or maybe not. I and my fellow old folks have worked and paid into the system most of our lives so yes, I’d like my money back. Younger people who don’t like the system vote in people who are like minded. I believe you will find, in the end, they will all be corrupted by the system regardless of which side of the aisle they are on. Anyway 40 trillion in debt is a national travesty and a big danger to the county but Social Security is not the governments money. It’s money that belongs to every worker who paid into the system.
Yes. It's definitely that and not the president blowing 160 million on golf. Or all the wars. Or boomers voting for people who literally campaign on screwing over next generation so rich people don't have to pay taxes.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/your-social-security-benefits-could-be-cut-by-a-quarter-in-2032-heres-what-to-know
Your Social Security benefits could be cut by a quarter in 2032. Here's what to ...
they pax taxes on it, which is morally reprehensible.
The whole thing needs to start over: forced investment by the government that is held for each person and is theirs, not some giant pool. Fix it, or it will die....just a question of how long before that happens.
Social Security is going broke due to mismanagement and nothing more. Raise the caps for contributions according to income and problem solved. The US debt going sky high is mostly to do with Inmate #P01135809's idiotic tax cuts for the rich.
$62,000 is the maximum a person can make on social security. Far cry from $100,000. If Congress had removed the limit on the income that social security tax is paid on the entire solvency could have been solved in the 90’s. It would still fix most of it now.
This is propaganda to try and convince us to go after Grandma's $1500/month by making us see her as a fat cat exploiting us. Make it a benefit for poor people, then it's welfare, then they can start in about how the people collecting it are parasites, just like they did with every other benefit. Meanwhile nobody ever stops to wonder why we're still getting poorer while billionaires suck the life out of us.
Concerned? Then quit voting for congressional candidates who vote to give tax breaks to the wealthy, to corporations, to churches and to internationals.........
The rich aren't going to fund your services for you. No other country works that way. Americans need to understand they they are going to pay more in taxes, even at median and low incomes, if they want government services.
There is more than enough money. If they fixed taxes decades ago when they realized it wouldn't be perpetually solvent we'd be paying less than we are now.
For 12% of the defense budget the government could build/give away US growth + 1% a year houses. Yes 12% of defense budget you could eventually give every American a free house (it'd take a while).
It'd be a pittance of the wealthy's stream to provide all the services. Meanwhile young families necessities have risen much faster than inflation.
I paid into this system for 40+ years. Hell if I’m okay with not getting the benefit of those payments. SS is not a welfare program, and means testing benefits would change the rules after the game was played.
No one anywhere collects $100K in Social Security per year. The median check is $1675.00 per month. If you wait to age 70, the very most you can collect is $5181.00 per month and most don't. The maximum check at age 67 is$4,152.00 per month. No gets $100,000 that's just ragebait bullshit.
This is total bullshit. The max you can get is about 5100 a month if you wait till 70 AND made enough money to put into SS at the max. This comes to 62K or so.
So when I start collecting I should feel guilty because I earned it after working for decades? What is the point of this post. How dare you work your ass off and then receive a check every month! I must have wondered into the millennial Reddit where they blame the boomers for all their problems.
Stop trying to turn the generations against each other when some simple policy tweaks making the ultra wealthy give back to society would fix everything.
This is just the Trumper’s fostering generational discontent. The same scummy politicians that robbed Social Security are the same scummy politicians that allowed the transfer of wealth in 2008 that prevents you from getting a home.
No it is not because of that. It's because wealth is being hoarded by assholes with billions of dollars. This article title is designed to make us fight each other. Don't believe it. A could hundred K is NOTHING compared to the money hoarded by people like Bezos and Musk.
You can’t make me upset at retirees getting $100k. But I will be upset at someone making $100,000,000 in a year and only paying their first $184,000 in income tax (or something like tha
Just abolish the income cap where rich people stop paying in. Oh yea, politicians would be over the cap so they aren't voting that into law. Politicians are all scumbags, sick greedy scumbags.both parties
No SSI benefits are $100K a year. They must be assuming a married couple, both of whom waited until full retirement age or older to start drawing benefits, and both of whom earned more than average over their careers.
That isn't why "social security is going broke". The senate and house have been raiding the social security program for years, perhaps decades. If they hadn't we'd have a surplus.
Let's raid the retirement accounts of the Senate and House representatives themselves now
Oh, so you're telling me a system designed to require an ever increasing contributing base so current beneficiaries collect the contributions of future beneficiaries is a bad idea?
Yea sure, it's boomer's fault, not the rich people paying barely any taxes or barely paying their workers or private equity buying up all the housing property or private interests trying to turn every service into a subscription
You mean they’re getting the benefits they paid for? That is exactly what is supposed to happen. What you really mean is people are getting what they are entitled to - they were forced to give the government that money.
More bullshit propaganda trying to create a generational divide to then destroy Social Security.
No individual Social Security beneficiary receives $100,000 per year, but a tiny fraction of retired couples (about 0.05%) combine to receive $100,000 or more annually.
If we waved a magic wand and cut off ALL benefits (I mean 100%) to this tiny number of people, it wouldn’t amount to a fart in a hurricane next to our 40 Trillion debt.
Lol! Wealthy boomers? Their median net worth is about $410k, which is not enough for an average stay in assisted living, at the end of life for a couple. Btw, $100k in benefits? According to?
The Social security fund has been ‘running out of money in a few years’ for the last 50 years. This is happening because our elected officials won’t deal with the problem properly so they pass a short term measure to kick the can down the road for a while. Republicans want to solve this by eliminating all social programs that do not help business
This seems to be a propaganda article. Nothing said about Congress borrowing from the SS funds, the many wars that didn’t need to be fought, the reduced taxing of corporations and billionaires. All the blame is on the SS recipients!
I expect better critical thinking from this sub than a bunch of blamers. We’ll see if my comment is removed, I’ve never been able to comment in this sub.
If you go back and look at the history of our own government robbing social security funds, both sides of the aisle, you'll find yet again, this is bs. The boomers aren't the issue. It's the leadership robbing their people.
Sweet. I can't wait to NOT have any social security that I have been paying into since I started working at the age of 17. Nothing like keeping our promises. What a freaking Ponzi scheme
Even when you believe the worst possible "Social Security is bankrupt!" projections, it just means that social security payments will be 25% smaller than currently expected. Stop falling into fearmongering and Social Security privatization propaganda.
Blaming a few high earners is nonsense. Can’t see the article, but how many are drawing $100K a year?
“The average retirement benefit is approximately $2,008.31 per month (August 2025), which translates to roughly $24,000 annually.”
Everyone who has any familiarity with the system knows there are too few workers paying in compared to retirees taking money out. And life expectancies have grown, so many SS recipients take out more over their lifetimes than they pay in.
SS is already progressive - it rewards low earners at the expense of high earners. It’s not designed as a welfare system, and it will lose support if it becomes even more like welfare.
The solution has been obvious for years - higher premiums from workers and employees, lower benefits for retirees and a later starting date to draw benefits. It will be some combination of these. Those in Congress know this, but believe voters will punish them for fixing the problem.
If they removed the income cap for SS contributions and made the super rich pay an amount commensurate with their income. SS would be funded for another 30 years.
If they paid in more, they’d collect more. Doesn’t solve the problem, unless you’re just proposing to steal that extra money they’re going to pay and give it to someone else.
It’s basically a fact at this point that taxes have to be raised. I don’t know how any fiscal conservative can be opposed to it at this point. You can give the generic “we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” but that is not realistic. You’d have to brutally slash entitlements in that case, which will obviously never happen. There is really no alternative here.
30 year old here. They paid into it, nothing wrong with receiving what’s been paid in. I’m more upset with the cap - if we got rid of the cap, there would ahve been enough for everyone. It’s a social program, not an ROI investment vehicle
As usual conservatives encourage people to fight with each other instead so they don't fight the ultra rich and corporations that don't pay enough taxes. Don't fall for this trap. People have been saying the same thing about SS for decades and blaming previous generations.
The majority of American problems can be fixed by taxing the rich! All that money came mostly from tax breaks and loophole they use... Its time to let the majority of American get a piece of the pie and not let the fat cat billionaires keep it all for themselves!!
We paid into Social Security our whole working lives as our government had the money deducted for our future social security deducted from our paychecks. It’s not the boomers fault that the plan was designed this way.
No, the debt is growing because of Trump's disastrous tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and his administration's rampant deficit spending. People collecting their benefits are not to blame.
the boomers didn't even start out paying into it. gen x has been paying into it since we were kids, and the boomers have been benefiting. keep in mind, that the boomers were shitty parents to us, grossly absent, didn't help with a single thing, and now, when gen x is getting ready to retire, the money won't be there for us. the boomers just got handed every damn thing and gen x gets f'd yet again.
If you paid into the system when you reach retirement age you should be able to collect what you paid into. If we need to start taxing billionaires to get this fixed so be it.
People don't get $100k social security checks each year. What they get is more like $1000 to $3500 monthly. That is not a lot of money each year to live off. And it is taxed. And we paid into social security our whole working lives. I paid in for 45 years. It is not a hand out program.
Second sentence of the article "Some of America’s oldest are eligible for more than $100,000 a year in combined Social Security benefits". That would be 8333/month before income taxes.
Remove the salary cap, apply social security taxes to other forms of income, and make claimants file wealth returns so those who are already rich with personal retirement savings aren’t getting free money from the government.
I've got 40 credits and according to the IRS when I retire at at 67, will get $847 a month. Not sure where this article says there's 100K in benefits for retirees?
The article points out the shrinking workforce that is necessary to fund current Social Security payouts. This is due in part to the shrinking birthrate and smaller number of younger workers. This is also due to the economic trend of trying to do more with fewer workers (think layoffs, dearth of new jobs etc), with various forms of AI agents being the latest, most aggressive implementation.
If various AI agents, such as customer service agents, robo-taxis, robotic trucks etc. are analogous to old fashioned, warm blooded workers, then they can be taxed in the same way. Collect payroll taxes for AI agents, including Medicare and Social Security. That may be a good source of new government revenue. It's not as if AI agents will ever collect Medicare and Social Security.
Must be nice, I'm getting less than $25k after 38 years of paying in. I made a point of investing similar amounts for my entire career and my MRI from my traditional IRA is about five times my SS.
Social Security Trust Fund breaks even (taxes < liabilities) in 2035. All beneficiaries will get a benefit cut.
All those boomers will receive less money per month. Yikes.
Mind you, Social Security was created to address elder poverty. Folks in their 80’s are not exactly the most employable folks. Employers are least likely to hire them.
We will have an enormous wave of elder poverty unless something is done. Peoples moms, dads, aunties and uncles are going to be in serious trouble.
what they fail to mention: When social security was created in 1935 the life expectancy for men and women was much shorter than it is today (woman was 64 and men was 60). As a result people are living longer thus collecting longer.
Yes it is true that they are collecting more than they put in but it isn't do to greed. It is due to the fact that Congress has refused to get off its duff and do its job as it pertains to keeping social security and medicare viable and sustainable.
we were told it won't be there when we retire.so we buckled down invested heavy paid our mortgage. we paid into it.it is not a gift we worked for it.it is our money.dont understand why you don't get it.
Are they expected to reject the payments because they were born into a post WW2 economic boom unmatched in modern history that made them all real estate millionaires? The same group that thinks kids these days just aren't interested in owning a home, world travel or driving sports cars because they afforded all those on a part time job.
True, and tempting to put that Boomer Bait out there but don't fall for the redirection. They're slashing and underfunding social security. This is trademark Republican "starve the beast" tactics
That's not how social security works. Social security was never supposed to have a massive slush fund. It is designed to be a direct tax to retiree stipend. When the money "runs out" then the system will function as intended. Workers work, and a portion of that money will go toward those that are retired. There is an individual cap to not overburden workers, but the money at the end gets divided by all of our retired people.
If you spent money instead of saving/investing fore retirement because you didn't know how the system works, that's a little on you. If you're unhappy with the benefits and taxes, then this might help to bring the current retirees more in line politically with the young. It's not a coincidence that older people vote so much differently when they are insulated from the economic decisions affecting workers, this might be a good chance for older people to feel a direct consequence of constantly squeezing younger and working people.
Here is a list of super easy fixes that retirees as a voting block are against, but might support if they see their checks fluctuating;
Lowering wealth inequality, uncapping social security tax, unions to push up worker wages, any policy that drives median wages up or demand side economics.
Immigration - more workers means a larger pool to tax, immigration is free money for pension systems.
Getting rid of people who pay billions in taxes and don't get any of it back isn't going to help either. Can also eliminate the cap on social security contributions.
Whatever happened to paying a reasonable insurance premium and just being glad we don't have to file a claim? Instead, everyone from failing businesses to poor people upside down in truck payments has ruined it for the rest of us. Solution:
Fix the economy and the rules so that nobody feels compelled to cheat, lie, and steal, and prosecute the anti-American assholes who do it anyway.
Social security is supposed to be a safety net, not a tidy nest egg for one's three times great grandchildren.
I’ve been paying into it since I was 16 and I’m now nearly 33. That’s 17 years of “investing” in my retirement that I’ll probably just lose altogether. Our country sucks
I've worked for wealthy people almost my entire adult life. I couldn't even begin to count how many calls I've overheard from extravagantly wealthy people fighting, and belittling, social security call center employees. You see, these people really don't have much else to do after pickle-ball, 3 Martini lunches. It's a pretty rough life.
They don't need it, and if they actually stopped to consider that their greed is actually going to hurt the next generation.....HAHAHAHAHAH. Nah, man. Most of them, honestly don't care what happens to the rest of us, as long as the numbers go up and to the right.
Granted, I'm a bit cynical on the subject. I've seen so....much....waste, and general indifference concerning the "rest of us".
For what it’s worth, we’ve had numerous proposals to fix SS and the budget, but the GOP has blocked everything for decades. This all goes back to the Reagan (R) era.
Of course, if the Republicans weren’t funding a massive war machine while giving massive tax breaks to the rich while defunding social security maybe there wouldn’t be a problem caring for Americans? And maybe instead of cherry-picking statistics and getting info from extreme right wing think tanks, do some actual research. Fortune used to be thought of as a reputable source until Trump conned them so easily about his own wealth.
This is the stupidest problem of all of the US government financial problems. Social Security could be funded forever with a very simple policy change. I make more than 200k per year as do at least 15-16 million other US taxpayers. I made this much for several years before I realized that I stop paying social security tax in the middle of the year. Because there is a cap where no tax is paid after you’ve earned 178k. Someone who makes a million per year doesn’t pay in after March. It took a colleague pointing it out for me to realize it. Because the deduction makes zero difference in my life. Which is probably true for the majority of people in this tax bracket. Do away with the cap and you will have 15-16 million people continuing to pay all year long. If the cap was eliminated social security would be well funded for a very long time. But it won’t happen because it is labeled as a “tax increase”. Which it is. But it only affects the wealthy. And is unlikely to be a burden for any of them.
Isn't the real issue that the 1% don't pay into Social Security tax on all their income? First, it is capped at $184,500 of salary. Then the 1% don't pay any social security tax on their non-payroll income. Which is really just a dodge to pay lower taxes on non-salary income that in their case replaces salary. They pay themselves in low tax ways, that shouldn't rally be under taxed, because it's their income instead of payroll.
The very highest SS monthly benefit amount is $5181 per month IF you wait until 70 to take retirement benefits. So the headline is incorrect. No one is receiving $100k a year in social security payments.
Not to mention all the divorcees that are collecting the benefits of their former husbands, even if there were multiple marriages. This means that a single man (only stating it as a man as for most boomers, only the men worked) there might be multiple people taking the same check every month. We in later generations will either see very little of what we put in or we will see the printing of much money to cover the payouts. Whatever they choose will have the same effect. Said simply, boomers have pillaged the fund and there will be less left for those after.
The article frames $730k in lifetime SS benefits after $200k in lifetime contributions as an unearned windfall for retirees but it's actually a terrible return on 40-50 years of contributions. If I had started saving and investing 12% of my income starting at 16, I'd have millions even if I invested in something more conservative than an index fund.
Expecting retirees,, current or future, to receive a worse ROI than what we get now should be politically radioactive. If benefit face cuts, voters are going to have to decide if they're willing to lose $200k in order to "win" the culture war.
It’s become increasingly clear that we have to take desperate measures to stabilize the debt situation. Taxes will have to go up and spending will have to be cut. As for Social Security, we have to think about sacrifices. Not benefit cuts or work requirements but we need to get rid of the cap and introduce a sliding scale of benefits from the top down as well as auditing SSDI
Bush had a plan to fix social security which pretty much all now agree would have worked and increased benefits. The dems blocked it, and then Obama could have fixed it but he did nothing. Biden could have also fixed it, he did nothing. By the way, Harris had no plan to fix it.
The US doesn't have their house in order. Carney explained the bond market the best when he says that sometimes the market will start focusing in on this. I'm no economist but the US is in so much debt it's going to start getting really real for people soon.
BBkatzenn | 7 hours ago
paying into social security for decades while reading that the math might not even work by the time i get there is such a comforting little adulthood experience 😭 i’m not mad at retirees for taking what they were promised, i just really want to know what exactly my generation is being promised
ill_be_huckleberry_1 | 6 hours ago
Sorry, Best we can is electing a demagogue who will steal billions from the goverment and then rig elections so that he, his family, and his disciples can continue to do so in perpetuity.
CliftonForce | 7 hours ago
Remember: Conservatives have spent decades pushing the narrative of "Social Security won't be there when you retire." Their specific goal is so they can kill it off entirely and folks won't get mad about it.
SS is being killed off. Are you mad about that? If not, then the narrative worked.
TimeshareMachine | 6 hours ago
I’ll know the world is healing when businesses just start giving millenial and newer generations discounts. “Sorry you paid into a system you can’t use, didn’t get to afford a house, lived through multiple recessions, and scraped to get by for your entire life and will never retire. Would you like .50 off your coffee?”
beard_lover | 5 hours ago
Businesses are going to end senior discounts by the time we millennials get there, given all our previous and current luck.
mistressbitcoin | 5 hours ago
Demographics will be lopsided and they will be given youth discounts.
martin | 6 hours ago
GenX, waiting for that discount. I'm sure it'll come if i stand in this line just a little longer.
notpostingmyrealname | 4 hours ago
Lol, gen x will have a senior discount before much longer.
TimeshareMachine | 5 hours ago
Sorry, every gen xer I know owns a house.
Sweet_Concept2211 | 5 hours ago
75% of Boomers own a home;
60% of Gen X-ers;
55% of Millennials;
25% of older Zoomers...
youngishgeezer | 2 hours ago
Now do the percentages by ages. It seems obvious that Gen Z will have lower home ownership rates just by virtue of being younger.
theriskybusinesscar | 2 hours ago
Yup, no one likes to hear it but Millennials and Boomers are closer when age cohorts are compared in both wealth and home ownership.
TimeshareMachine | 5 hours ago
I don’t doubt that data or that zoomers will own less houses than older generations, but I can’t help but wonder if the zoomer number will go up when they reach the age millennials were whenever they bought their house.
…also, just so we’re clear, no war but class war.
casinocooler | 5 hours ago
We probably won’t live that long
mistressbitcoin | 5 hours ago
You dont get senior discounts anywhere yet?
Hopsblues | 4 hours ago
We're going to get 20% less and like it.
30yearCurse | 5 hours ago
who did you vote for GenX...
throwaway098764567 | 5 hours ago
oh fuck all the way off, some of us have been progressives since before you were born
mistressbitcoin | 5 hours ago
Dont worry, when gen X is the oldest, youll be blamed for everything even more than boomers.
KarmaticArmageddon | 4 hours ago
Obviously there are progressives of all ages, but it's indisputable that Gen X went hard for Trump by the biggest margin (10 points) of all generations.
Historical-Range6016 | 4 hours ago
That’s just sad.
AlaskaFI | 5 hours ago
That will offset the $3 tip necessary to stop your barista from crying loudly in front of everyone
BadFish7763 | 5 hours ago
Yup. I remember my mother fretting over politicians on CNN telling her SS was going bankrupt. In about 1983.
Udder_Influencer | 4 hours ago
It is, because we aren't taxing the rich enough. So, you know, there is a fix right there that doesn't involve cutting benefits.
BadFish7763 | 4 hours ago
It's been going broke for over 40 years, lol
Who_dat_goomer | 21 minutes ago
I think we are getting pretty close to that point, where eliminating social security will simply be met with a shrug and a reiteration of how we should be focused on how about a dozen trans women might participate in sports.
growaway9172 | 6 hours ago
I mean, its not as much of a narrative as it is a mathametical eventuality right?
Inevitable_Window308 | 6 hours ago
Social security is like a hose going into a pool with a pump sucking water out
In the worst case, the pool goes dry and only as much water gets pumped in gets pumped out. This is the current scenario with the social security trust fund (pool water) going low
ComradeJohnS | 6 hours ago
its only a mathematical eventuality under the gimped rules that were put on it like having a cap on income that flows into it. (not the only rule but a major one) rich people need to start paying their fair share in taxes again, let’s Make America Great Again with a great tax rate like when we built the interstate highway system.
china is looping train circles around our crumbling cities (figuratively) and instead of being embarrassed by our horrible representatives the rich convinced enough poor idiots to blame other poor people.
death by a thousand cuts
casinocooler | 5 hours ago
I thought those were the rules in which it was designed. Are you saying when they created the ponzi scheme they never thought of this eventuality?
smokeweedNgarden | 5 hours ago
Bro the President is stealing billions of dollars. What.
You can fix it legally by cutting military spending and taxing who needs to be taxed. Or you can just fucking take it, it turns out
Vols1966 | 3 hours ago
Eliminate the salary cap on paying SS tax.
rightoftexas | 3 hours ago
Social security needs trillions, not billions.
Phugasity | 3 hours ago
Thank you for taking the time to type this. We spend a lot on our Military, but as a percent it's quite a bit more reasonable. Benefits like Social Security and Medicare are sooooo much more expensive. Not that we can't solve them, but cutting the military spending alone won't make a dent. If I remember correctly, social security is pinned to cost of living, but contribution caps are not. It is irresponsible not to raise more revenue for SS through W2 taxation.
Apptubrutae | 7 hours ago
Don’t give into the doomerism. Even the running out of money scenario is 87% payout when they hit the cliff.
It’s also a political nuclear bomb.
It’s always wise to plan for the unexpected, but it’s still highly likely social security exists in much the same form as when you retire…and even if it doesn’t, it is almost impossible to imagine drastic cuts. They’ll tank the economy before that happens, lol
red286 | 7 hours ago
Social security is a pay-as-you-go system. If it becomes overburdened, you just increase the payments into the system.
The only reason it's "on the verge of running out" is because you have cretins in office who keep insisting that increasing the payments is "unfair", mostly because they don't give a shit about old people who aren't independently wealthy.
Ray192 | 6 hours ago
"Pay as you go" means it's a direct tax transfer from working people to retired people.
I'm a working person and I think it's ludicrous that working people today should pay more and more of their income to support retired boomers.
Raise my taxes if you want and spend on actually important causes like fighting climate change or subsidizing, but transferring more of my taxes to support boomers? Fuck that.
ManOn_A_Journey | 5 hours ago
And this is exactly what they want...Boomers, Xers, Millennials, etc. fighting over the scraps, while Billionaires are all busy buying another island. We're making it too easy for them.
Ray192 | an hour ago
The US spent 1.6 trillion on social security last year. The combined wealth of all billionaires in the US in 2025 is like $7 trillion. If you magically confiscated every cent owned by billionaires, we'd back in the same same boat in 5 years.
Sure, tax billionaires more, but that won't solve the fact that in the 40s there were like 20 workers for each social security recipient and now it's almost 2.5 to 1.
And if we did confiscate all the billionaire wealth, spending it on boomers instead of investing it into the future is the dumbest thing you can do with that money.
onemassive | 4 hours ago
In any functioning society, the workers subsidize the young and old and the healthy subsidize the sick. Not all boomers are rich, those are also our parents and social security means we don’t find as many dead ones in the street. I ln any case, they haven’t increased workers contributions so the idea that “ working people today should pay more and more of their income to support retired boomers” isnt happening, we’re talking more about removing income caps.
Ray192 | an hour ago
In a "functioning society" the ratio of workers to retirees would something close to 5 or 10 workers to each retiree. Now it's 2.7 workers to 1 retirees and dropping every year. How much money are you expecting to leech from workers to support workers every year? The math doesn't work.
How you raise taxes doesn't matter. If you're gonna raise more taxes, wasting it all on supporting boomers is the dumbest thing you can do with that money. Invest it in the future, not waste it on the past.
red286 | 5 hours ago
Okay well don't complain when the system can't afford to support you when you retire then, I guess.
DirectionOwn294 | 4 hours ago
If you don't rely on the system, then you won't have an issue.
SparksAndSpyro | 6 hours ago
You are being promised exactly what your generation votes for. Wake up and vote. Performative whining is worthless.
LuckyPlaze | 7 hours ago
Blaming boomers for taking the payout they earned is some bullshit.
skellis | 7 hours ago
Except the boomers overwhelmingly voted for the tax cuts that are bankrupting the services they are currently enjoying.
DasFunke | 7 hours ago
And social security has been under threat since the 90s without raising taxes. The boomers could have fixed it with simply voting changes.
Now they’re old and it doesn’t affect them so they don’t care.
Available-Battle-753 | 7 hours ago
They are definitely having fun going thru the Healthcare system they supported so much.
notgoodohoh | 7 hours ago
Alexa play I got mine by the black keys
frackthestupids | 6 hours ago
I’m sorry, we don’t allow black groups here - some boomer probably
Pinewold | 6 hours ago
Rich people control congress, top 400 richest people control over 20 trillion in wealth. Don’t blame boomers for top .1% getting tax breaks passed.
Mr_Tort_Feasor | 5 hours ago
It's kind of like they got to spend their retirement twice. Once in the form of their benefits, and once in the form of tax breaks that they voted for which were funded by social security contributions.
TropicNightLightning | 7 hours ago
Social Security was supposed to be like a forced investment. So where does that investment go when it ends? Are we going to get paid back, or are they going to steal it?
It's not really an entitlement when it's your money you earned from hard labor.
Vralo84 | 7 hours ago
Social Security is forced insurance not investment. It’s guaranteed income in retirement or if you’re disabled. It’s not meant to be like stocks and bonds.
Agreeable-Fly-1980 | 7 hours ago
Did you get your tariff money back?
Veronica612 | 7 hours ago
That is exactly what entitlement means. We are entitled to our benefits because we paid for them.
When people say “entitled” as if it’s bad, what they mean is that person is acting entitled when they aren’t.
AccordingMedicine129 | 7 hours ago
What happened with the tariffs? We paid them. Are we getting them back?
martinaee | 7 hours ago
It’s not that they shouldn’t get benefits, it’s that generationally they “pulled the ladder up behind them” so to speak.
Defiant_Wolf5934 | 7 hours ago
This is what people fail to realize. There is a reason that the generation of baby boomers is blamed for a lot of today's problems. Them, as a voting bloc, have voted in some of the worst politicians in history in terms of both domestic and foreign policy. The forever wars? Wealthy baby boomer politicians voted in favor of that. Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations? Baby boomers. Massive defense spending? Baby boomers. On and on and on. So it goes.
notassigned2023 | 5 hours ago
About half of us were voting against it. We could have used help from the younger generations who don't vote.
MisinformedGenius | 7 hours ago
What? Tax rates for Social Security have been 6.2% since 1990. It is also worth noting that they went from 5.08% in 1980 to 6.2% in 1990, precisely when Baby Boomers were at their earnings peak.
naijaboiler | 7 hours ago
and they are taking out more than they put in.
bullhead2007 | 6 hours ago
Right the correct solution is removing the pay in cap.
Flacid_Fajita | 6 hours ago
Boomers have continually voted for the one party bent on handing out tax breaks. They’re largely to blame politically.
The problem is that boomers hate taxes and love government checks.
capnwally14 | 7 hours ago
Boomers are taking out way more than they put in. Remember when they paid in the recipients were the silent generation. So boomers had to pay considerably less per person to support the payouts for the generation above.
Now that we have a worse ratio of younger generations to boomers. Also life expectancy is going up + boomers hold a much larger share of wealth vs the generations before (a function of restrictive housing policies which inflate the value of the assets they have)
https://fortune.com/2026/08/26/millennials-boomers-retirement-social-security/
AccordingMedicine129 | 7 hours ago
Who the fuck you think got us in this predicament?
komodo_lurker | 7 hours ago
Boomers are taking way more than they contributed. If you want to talk about what’s shitty.
Cikkk | 6 hours ago
Boomers have had it easy. 50k homes, 1 income, 40 hrs a week. Affordability everywhere. So yeah, the drastic 10x change is beyond frustrating.
Hopsblues | 4 hours ago
No have no clue what you are talking about.
madtricky687 | 7 hours ago
Not when all their voting fucks over their kids and grandkids and future generations of our country. They are voting for themselves and talk endless shit about the generation that is paying for them. Very little sympathy.
AdmirableRadio5921 | 7 hours ago
Yes. But what about when the economy and debt that they left is in shambles? (Is it? The ‘actual’ value is probably worth more than the debt…)
Available_Finger_513 | 7 hours ago
Boomers fucked up almost every aspect of society for their children
Distahs | 7 hours ago
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Social security is not dependable, diversify.
SwivelPoint | 7 hours ago
then can i have my money back that they’ve been pulling for 30 yrs?
thetimsterr | 7 hours ago
NO.
And no complaining about it.
Unpopular_Ninja | 7 hours ago
Could just stop paying taxes, not like the government actually does its job anymore.
broken_sword001 | 7 hours ago
The math will always work. If they run out they turn the money printer on.
AndyKJMehta | 7 hours ago
You should be mad. You are being promised something today as well for all your payments into the system.
InternationalWin2850 | 6 hours ago
It's very simple. Give me back every cent I every paid into Social Security, at a modest 5% compounded interest, year over year. We can then call it even, I'll walk away. I would never dream of expecting the extremely generous lifetime compensations that Senators and Congressmen are 'entitled' to.
Cool-Protection-4337 | 6 hours ago
boomers taking a cut to benefits so the program can continue to exists should be the first step. Letting one generation knock out all others isnt fair either. Truly the only fair thing is raising taxes on the wealthy, but till money is out of politics that isnt happening.
PersonalFinanceD | 6 hours ago
Right! They paid into the system and they should draw their benefits. Politicians should not have "borrowed" money from Social Security without repaying it (or at all). This post is inflammatory for no reason at all.
Pyramidinternational | 6 hours ago
Maybe just scrap the whole idea? It only came around 150 years ago, we managed to live during old age just fine for the 6,000+ years prior
callmesnake13 | 6 hours ago
Retirees made the rules that are keeping us from being able to own anything or save anything.
FreddyJetson | 5 hours ago
According to Elon Musk stated, "Don't worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years. It won't matter." He clarified his view by adding, "You won't need to save for retirement... if any of the things that we've said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant."
https://fortune.com/article/elon-musk-ceo-tech-billionaires-dont-save-for-retirement-ai-future-of-work-american-workers/
Financial-Craft-1282 | 5 hours ago
They have been saying this my whole life. When I was a kid, it was my parents (boomers) who wouldn't get it. Now it's Gen Y or Z. They always say this--those who want to privatize it.
WoodWizzy87 | 5 hours ago
I want my money back then, including all the interest and capital gains it would’ve made.
LingonberryOpen565 | 5 hours ago
My mom started collecting this year. She told me when she was in college everyone said social security would run out before they were able to collect, and she thought she would never see a cent until like 10 years ago or something
Party-Bandicoot8022 | 5 hours ago
“It’s my money and I want it now”
htffgt_js | 4 hours ago
Its crazy.
Though based on current projections, if nothing changes (increase in the payroll base for SS taxes etc), starting in 2034 the SS payout will be reduced to 78% of the intended value. Not great , but something you can plan for the next 70 odd years after that.
datagamma | 4 hours ago
You don’t pay into it like it’s some savings account. It’s just a way to get a country that hates government social programs to accept tax to raise all boats. The program has to be adjusted each year to account for this. Which is why the maximum taxable income is adjusted upward each year.
Character-Active2208 | 4 hours ago
They will raise taxes before cutting benefits because retirees vote more reliably than young workers
It’s the generations after us that are going to be nailed with higher taxes to support more retirees per worker….
mortgagepants | 4 hours ago
scrap the cap. a fund from which everyone can withdraw but not into which everyone pays is not going to stay solvent.
Crime_Dawg | 3 hours ago
I'm literally paying the max, aka on all 186k, and I may barely see a fucking dime. What a joke this country is.
TheBlackRider2828 | 3 hours ago
Lot of hot earth melting ice rising sea levels. The works! Btw, I'm finally not suspended any longer muhahaha
Ill-Reporter-3382 | 3 hours ago
Tech bros are trying to summon an ancient Sumerian demon in order to introduce a one world government and wipe out 2/3 of the global population in the process. We got scammed.
Busterlimes | 3 hours ago
Boomers are robbing us all the way to the grave and leaving us holding the bag. . . They have consistently voted for economic incompetence to avoid contributing to future generations rather than leaving the world a better place than what they found it like their parents did.
Cold-Tomorrow-8398 | 2 hours ago
We shouldn’t be forced to pay into what is basically a de facto ponzi scheme
Apollo506 | 2 hours ago
You already know what our generation is promised... nothing.
Longduckdon22 | 2 hours ago
I am mad that retirees are taking what they were promised. Only because they have known for 2+ decades that the Social Security fund needed additional funding but they kicked the can down the road so they can take from the younger generation yet again.
I don’t want to pay more in Social Security tax. I want to the boomers to take less because they didn’t fund the program when it was their tax dollars.
HillBillyHilly | 5 minutes ago
I'm not mad at retires taking what they were promised. What I DO have a problem w is that their salary is capped. That cap needs to be removed..
joeydimaggio | 8 hours ago
Yeah remove the income cap and start taxing the oligarchs. I give two fucks about someone who worked their entire lives getting a check for 100k. Pennies compared to what trump is stealing or spending in iran
dpacker780 | 8 hours ago
This. These articles keep reading like the PEOPLE are the problem, when it's gross government mismanagement. All of Trump's tax-breaks for the wealthy and corporations are basically putting all the things for the other 300m of us at risk.
Gonna_B_Alright | 8 hours ago
Well that’s because the owners of these companies writing the articles are the rich people who will never need SSI because of dividends and bribes.
NonReality | 8 hours ago
Yeah its fortune lmao its all a psyop
Rolandersec | 8 hours ago
“It’s not the people in charge that’s the problem, it’s this one guy who has no say in what’s happening.”
/s.
m-r-g | 8 hours ago
Executive is not in charge of the budget. GOP in congress needs to grow a spine. I'm not hopeful.
seasix732 | 8 hours ago
THIS executive IS in charge of the budget. They withhold funds from projects they don't like and fund other things not in the budget.
joeydimaggio | 8 hours ago
Gop in congress are a bunch of child rapists
AcanthaceaeGrand34 | 7 hours ago
Every American has a say. At least 30% choose not to vote.
ivlivscaesar213 | 5 hours ago
Give me a party that says they will tax the oligarchs in their manifesto.
Caracalla81 | 7 hours ago
If they want to kill social security they can't do it all at once. They need to slowly pull it away from "rich" boomers first.
thehourglasses | 8 hours ago
Wait until you find out about cascading biosphere collapse driven by consumer capitalism and unconstrained industrialization.
FuzzyDynamics | 8 hours ago
Boomers are the problem. They vote for tax cuts everywhere and spit on anyone who needs benefits and cry about the welfare state while being the largest burden, destroying the world around them, and brutally deporting a significant portion of the young labor force needed to help sunset them along into hell. Fuck their money and their property. They can starve with the rest of us.
Clyde_Frag | 8 hours ago
Two things
So it's easy to blame things on older people but a lot younger people should be looking at themselves in the mirror when it comes to who they vote for and whether they actually vote.
BeeAdept4761 | 7 hours ago
Why has neither party resulted in gains in wealth for under 40s? 70+ own 30% of wealth under 40 make 6%…the inequality has grown throughout both administrations and corporations have grown from free trade and low wage foreign labor. What has either party done to reduce the use of low wage foreign labor/ imported labor to secure increasing wages and inequality?
FuzzyDynamics | 8 hours ago
The people with no property working multiple jobs to support a welfare class who doesn’t work, holds all the wealth, and needs constant services and products and tax money from us should vote more, I agree.
BeeAdept4761 | 7 hours ago
Yes it’s also opening up to “free and fair trade” with countries who use slave labor and are heavily subsidized from authoritarian government was a bad idea that was never corrected. We gutted working class union jobs and now have Amazon and Walmart instead of American businesses. Why would anyone want to hire an American?
justinwfreed | 7 hours ago
You should be very careful...if you are lucky, you too will become "old" and the younger people will blame YOU for whatever ails them.
This is no different than the older people saying that it is the younger generations who are lazy, dumb, arrogant and useless...
FuzzyDynamics | 7 hours ago
When I’m old they can blame me and I’ll also look out for the strategic interests of the world more than my tactical ones.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in"
What happens to a society when the old men plant surveillance cameras, detention centers, and crippling tax burdens on everyone so they can feel safe from brown people and maintain their home value?
GusTheKnife | 8 hours ago
Nobody votes for tax increases on themselves, or approves of building skyrise towers next to their single family house.
It’s up to politicians to balance budgets, spend wisely, tax wisely and make reasonable proposals, and for people of all generations to vote for the ones who do.
Acting like everyone born between 1946 and 1964 has the same personality and is responsible for the nation’s problems is regarded.
joeydimaggio | 8 hours ago
I vote yes on the school bond and affordable housing every time
FuzzyDynamics | 8 hours ago
You’d probably be one of my inner circle of elderly people I cherish deeply. The rest can fucking rot.
joeydimaggio | 7 hours ago
I’m 52 years young- not quite elderly ( :
CupKitchen9964 | 7 hours ago
Yeah, no. Speak for yourself.
I will vote to increase my taxes, while I use every ounce of tax avoidance strategy available. Taxes make all of us safer enable a higher standard of living and overall makes the economy and country wealthier as long as they are invested in the people (sort of like investing in a business.) but I’m not going to hamstring myself when the ultra asset class pays 1% on their income.
And people arguing for SFH zoning don’t even understand what they are arguing for.
If they wanted to increase their wealth, they would vote for mixed use. A developer is going to pay for what that land can become, not what the SFH on top is worth. This is known as RLV and has been proven in actual market conditions.
So don’t lump me in with these uninformed folk.
FuzzyDynamics | 8 hours ago
They mostly are the same. My favorite people on the planet are the small amount of very old people who still care about the world beyond their own (rapidly waning) earthly interests.
Against them are legions upon legions of boomers holding miserly onto their benefits while stripping everyone else’s and only caring about the value of the tomb they’ll never sell while they vote in another rapacious, selfish, entitled boomer to drop a few last bombs on everyone else as they go out the door. They delight in it and they’re the perfect fall guys for younger predators because by the time we can stop them and try and get justice they’ll just be dead.
GusTheKnife | 7 hours ago
“Holding miserly onto their benefits.”
I see, you’re one of those awful, self-entitled types.
You expect seniors to give up their retirement benefits, even though they paid into the programs for their entire lives.
You expect them move out of their homes and into retirement homes, then sell them at below-market prices so that you can buy one.
In short, you want them to give up their benefits, give up their homes and get ready to die. And you call them selfish for not doing it for you.
karmics______ | 7 hours ago
He’s completely right, social security isn’t a savings account with your specific name on it funded by your contributions. It’s funded by the working age people below them. Boomers barely had to pay into the generation above them while enjoying disproportionately larger payments from the current working generation.
Yes, empty nesters should be expected to sell and move out or pay a premium for destroying the housing market. You’re crying that boomers have the expectation of following a sustainable social contract lmao
Doomdoomkittydoom | 7 hours ago
Anyone using "boomers" unironically as you is all that's what's wrong with the world.
HiggsFieldgoal | 8 hours ago
Eh, we could complain if we didn’t keep voting for them.
I’m no historian, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the first generation in history where the main-thrust of full adults, people from 25-50, still acted like children, whining for the government they want, while the elderly population 65+, are still calling the shots.
It’s supposed to be that the actual grownups of every generation have the power, and the elderly beg for accommodations from the generation of current grownups.
The idea that the current generation of adults are not only under the thumb of the elderly, but keep voting for elderly candidates… it couldn’t be more absurd.
But if we’re voting for these skeletons, and they write policies that benefit skeletons, you forfeit your right to complain.
FuzzyDynamics | 8 hours ago
That’s actually not true. The word senate literally comes from a word meaning council of elders. Same root as senile. The norm through history is old men holding everyone hostage well after their brains turned to mashed potatoes. Never before has a generation seen such massive life expectancy and wealth growth in their lifetime as the boomers and for the first time now, after they’ve been in power so long, life expectancy is now falling and the system they built has made them so terrified of having to work again and be able to make it through on their retirement they have become almost psychotically greedy. All the younger officials who have made it so far did it against institutional headwinds telling them to sit down every step of the way and saying they were too extreme or something.
America specifically, right now, is greyer than it’s ever been in our history AND the wealth disparity between boomers and everyone else is extremely unnatural. Old people are holding us all fucking hostage and not just Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin.
Fortestingporpoises | 7 hours ago
It's Fortune Magazine to be fair.
lifeisokay | 7 hours ago
Seriously, this is some culture war misdirection bullshit. Trying to make us blame the "Boomers" when in fact everyone has paid into Social Security and gets benefits proportional to their contribution.
How about we blame the damn oligarchs who aren't paying their dues? Or the administration that's wasting tax dollars on a war nobody wanted?
Or on said war causing inflation to stay elevated to an extent that the Fed can't lower rates, resulting in higher debt servicing costs, which is a large contributor to the national debt automatically ballooning without any additional spending?
freedraw | 8 hours ago
Yeah, the problem is someone who made a billion last year paid the same as someone who earned $184k.
clocks212 | 8 hours ago
But the benefit is also capped (technically calculated) at the same level as someone making $184k.
It’s not like someone who makes $300k is getting “free extra SSI”. They were only taxed up to $184k, and will be paid out the same dollars as someone who earned exactly $184k.
mikescha | 7 hours ago
True, but probably someone with between $300,000 and $3,000,000,000 of income will need social security less than someone making $30,000. So, raising the tax cap allows those people with substantial income to better support their fellow citizens.
CaliTexan22 | 7 hours ago
SS isn’t intended to be welfare.
freedraw | 6 hours ago
The intention of Social Security was to end elderly poverty.
ambermagpie | 6 hours ago
It was, it’s in the fucking name.
makemeking706 | 4 hours ago
Why? Because welfare is a pejorative but you don't feel that way about social security?
Spam_Hand | 7 hours ago
Thank you, I was looking for this comme nt.
Whike I am completely okay with taxing them based on their ability and capping the benefit they receive back later, it would be political suicide to suggest it.
Everyone juat says "REMOVE THE CAP!" without actually thinking to what step 2 is. Because the way its set up now just means removing the cap does nothing and sends the excess compared to right now back to already-rich people.
You need to change the disbursement rules as well, and id love for someone to realistically explain how that passes through the legislative process.
freedraw | 6 hours ago
Legislation to raise the cap can also include language to cap the maximum benefit.
HustlinInTheHall | 4 hours ago
No we are perfectly okay with removing the cap and capping benefits vs reducing everyone's benefits. I make 300k a year. I dont need more ss benefits and I'm fine paying more tax.
kingkeelay | 3 hours ago
lol you aren’t even in the upper half of the income tax brackets.
Mr_Tort_Feasor | 5 hours ago
Someone who made a billion last year isn't even drawing a salary, so they paid nothing. That also goes for hedge fund managers, law firm partners, medical practice owners, and others who get their income in ways other than a paycheck.
Separate_Bid_2364 | 7 hours ago
Removing the income cap only impacts those still paying into the system. Not the boomers who are benefiting from the systems oversight. I’m not saying raising the cap won’t help but everyone believing it’s a panacea is naive. Fixing social security is going to be more difficult and complicated than just raising the cap. Plus raising the cap further incentivizes the wealthy to take salary in ways other than ordinary income.
CAWildKitty | 6 hours ago
The Social Security administration itself crunched the numbers and stated that eliminating the cap would be a temporary boost and the current deficits would return within five years.
It’s going to take much more than just lifting the cap to solve this. There simply aren’t enough people paying in due to demographics and the people receiving benefits are living much longer than expected. Perfect double whammy.
The Brookings Institute put together a plan for solvency without overall benefit cuts. It’s gonna take the cap being lifted, increasing the payroll tax for everyone, increasing years worked to qualify for everyone, raising the retirement age for high earners and taxing all of their benefits, and ending the dependent retiree spousal benefit to actually fix this. Basically something from literally everyone. No one is going to accept it which is why Congress will wait until the absolute last minute to do this. Which also compounds the problem since the longer they wait the worse the problem gets.
Separate_Bid_2364 | 5 hours ago
Couldn’t agree more.
PurpleRoman | 8 hours ago
Getting rid of the cap won't affect the elites since they are usually paid in stocks anyways, it'll just tax doctors and lawyers more.
LindeeHilltop | 6 hours ago
100K? Bullshit. My mom was a military wife most her life & received less than $600 a month SocSec. That’s $7,200.00 a year. So don’t tell me boomers are getting $100K a year. I’ve never met any old timers taking that in. Their SocSec is based on their annual salary inputs and many of the poorest made less than $50K a year. Isn’t Fortune a Republican dog whistle rag just like Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ? Is this admin planning to steal from the elderly too? Wouldn’t reading the Economist or the Financial Times give more objectivity?
Nessie_of_the_Loch | 5 hours ago
To get 100K you need BOTH husband and wife to have worked and paid at the max level for 35+ years. These are the people who are getting the absolute least back relative to what they're putting in.
Considering that less than 1% of individuals get the max benefit, the amount of households who would COMBINE for 100K+ would be far, far less.
In fact, if there were MORE people who were getting the max, the SS trust fund would be at a healthier state, precisely because these people get back so little relative to what they've put in.
What we need are those rich fuckers at the top to put money in from investment returns.
gn63 | 2 hours ago
Adding to your point. If you pay the maximum each year, you hit the maximum benefit level well before you have worked for 35 years, although you keep paying Social Security taxes. Also, to get over $100,000 our hypothetical couple will have to wait until they are each over 67 years old to begin drawing. (At 67 their combined benefit would be $99,648 per year).
When boomers started their working lives, benefits were not taxable. Those taxes were imposed in 1983 and raised in the 1990s, so these folks effectively had their benefits cut.
joeydimaggio | 6 hours ago
Yes this rag advocates for the oligarchs. No war but class war.
boringexplanation | 8 hours ago
If you remove the cap then the check for the rich is going to be even more than 100k. SS has never been one big bucket. Benefits have always been based on the individual earned income.
chrisq823 | 8 hours ago
So leave the max benefit where it is and increase the cap.
seasix732 | 8 hours ago
no need to limit max benefit. the bend points mean any taxes over 184K would result in very small increase in SS benefit.
ValityS | 8 hours ago
There is no max benefit today. It's defined by one's contributions and the bond rate.
LordDaedalus | 8 hours ago
So add one.
penguinjuice | 8 hours ago
There absolutely is a maximum benefit. A simple Google search would show you this. It's currently $5181 a month if you delay until age 70 and have the maximum computable earnings.
blazeit420casual | 8 hours ago
And obviously it is completely impossible to implement a cap. Might as well leave everything as is!
Atomesk | 8 hours ago
Then change it and cap their payout. Uncap contributions. It’s not fair but they are rich and don’t need the social security income.
hwaite | 8 hours ago
SSDI benefits are not directly proportional to payments. It's a progressive system.
joeydimaggio | 8 hours ago
If we have the political capital to remove the cap we can also introduce means testing. As trump has shown there are no sacred cows. Pack the courts, redistrict to dilute red voters, increase the size of the house, and arrest every criminal in the GOP.
g-dbat10 | 8 hours ago
Social Security benefits already are subject to income tax (up to 85%), so what you’re asking for is already the law.
Crime_Dawg | 3 hours ago
W2 workers and oligarchs are not remotely the same, you know that right?
1stAmendment_Rage | 8 hours ago
This. Boomers need to vote alongside the younger generation, not feel threatened their benefits will be taken away. There are lots of reasons the older generation has contributed to the mess we’re in now, but almost every demographic did as well, and twice with this administration. Fund social programs, especially education. Hold criminals accountable. The end.
OccupyRiverdale | 8 hours ago
Regardless of your other statements the comment about Iran is completely false. Social security accounts for 23% of the federal budget or roughly $1.58 trillion. The money spent on the “war” with Iran is peanuts compared to the amount of the budget dedicated to social security.
karmics______ | 7 hours ago
Except social security isn’t paid by personal savings it’s paid by existing workers, their benefits would be significantly less if it was just a 401k self pay program. Why keep pouring money into an empty pit for boomers who give no fucks about a stable social contract versus investing that money into something useful
joeydimaggio | 7 hours ago
Paying a worker, someone’s grandma, to live a dignified life is a much better use of our resources than say, spending trillions in Iran or funneling tax dollars to the trump family
clipd_dead_stop_fall | 7 hours ago
So I've hit the cap in the past few years. The problem with simply removing the cap is you're charging people more for no change in benefit. It's essentially a tax increase on high earners. For that reason, I doubt it would pass. The folks in charge are the folks that would be hit most.
They definitely need to do something. I just don't think it can be done in any single group of people.
SituationTurbulent90 | 6 hours ago
Indeed. I'm not voting for a 7k increase in my payroll tax. Sorry.
joeydimaggio | 7 hours ago
You’re charging people more because they benefit from society more. I’d be all for a radical reshaping of our economy away from rent seeking. But I think most of the wealthy would rather not see a revolution. Much easier to just pay their fair share.
Crime_Dawg | 3 hours ago
Why does reddit think people making 300k are oligarchs?
economical_troll | 7 hours ago
Everyone seems to be blaming someone else. It’s the oligarchs, it’s the boomers, it’s the president, it’s the people not having enough babies, etc…..
I can play this game too. I put the blame on sending billions and billions of dollars overseas for basically nothing, and I also blame the immense amount of fraud even within this country.
joeydimaggio | 7 hours ago
Like the Iran war? The oligarchs wanted that war. You’re proving my point.
lythander | 4 hours ago
As someone who is close enough to have casually looked at what I might one day get, I don’t think SS max benefit hits 100k. I read the article
And they’re fast and loose with concrete numbers.
That said I don’t hold out much hope for ever getting anything useful from the program unless I work until I’m 70.
Lawyered15 | 4 hours ago
The benefits are earned. So, there would need to be a proportional benefit for any increase in the income cap. To the extent more money is needed to fund social security, there needs to either be an across the board benefit reduction or an across the board FICA increase.
Also, someone making over $100k is certainly not rich, and is no where near the FICA cap.
deep_fuckin_ripoff | 3 hours ago
Or… and hear me out… rather than punishing people earning $250k let’s just stop only adding Medicare tax to wages… all income is the same rate. Preferetial rates for investments and passive income should phase out immediately when your passive income exceeds your earned income.
zee_dot | 3 hours ago
Agreed. And note the 100k they reference is for a couple! I think the max is around 64K for an individual.
msblahblah | 2 hours ago
My personal conspiracy theory is that all of the generational fighting is a psyop. Why go after the ultra-rich for stealing everything when you can just blame Aunt Betty?
sierra-soul | 2 hours ago
Nailed it, media is owned by the oligarchs, they don't want you angry at them, they want you angry at your neighbor
jawshoeaw | an hour ago
But no Boomer is getting a check for $100k where did they get that number ??
WorldWarRon | 37 minutes ago
This comment has more upvotes than the comments on top and is 100% what most people support. What type of propaganda machine has Reddit become
MothsConrad | 8 hours ago
It's a little misleading title as it's a combined 100k a year, meaning spouses too. The max you can get per month from SS is $5,181 a month if you start taking it from the age of 70.
Social Security was never designed to pay out for people living 30 years past their retirement age.
WillTheyKickMeAgain | 7 hours ago
It doesn’t pay out 30 years unless you are very fortunate. Most people who collect will die before 30 years, especially if they begin to take it after their earliest year of eligibility.
PrinnyFriend | 5 hours ago
79 years is the average life expectancy.
gn63 | 2 hours ago
At birth. Not at retirement. For the 70 year old retiree (male), the life expectancy is 14.66 years.
jackruby83 | 2 hours ago
I'm getting 15.5 years (male) and 17.6 years (female) for someone turning 70 today. Social Security: Life Expectancy Calculator
gn63 | 2 hours ago
I used this table that was used for the 2026 Trustees Report. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
Yours is likely more up to date.
deep_fuckin_ripoff | 3 hours ago
Not for a 67 year old
warren_stupidity | 6 hours ago
0.03% of the population lives to 100. To max out benefits you have to retire at 70 or later. Also, the article forgot to mention that SS is partially taxed (up to 85%) as income once you cross the income threshold set in 1984. So that 5,181/month is not actually 5,181 a month. Approximately 0.85 * your benefits * your tax rate is being taken from those benefits. The threshold is $32,000 for this max'd out couple.
Starcast | 5 hours ago
That taxable portion of SS is based on your provisional income, which SS only counts 50% towards anyway.
Assuming this hypothetical couple was receiving maximum SS benefits and had no other income, they would pay $0 in federal taxes after the standard deduction.
BlaxicanXIX | 7 hours ago
But it doesn't matter because we can easily fund social security so that he can pay people for living 30 years past their retirement age. The mechanisms are there, it's just the political will that is missing
Mundane-Count-9709 | 8 hours ago
No one is collecting $100k in social security. If you were at the top of salaries, and wait til 70, the max is $62,172. The majority of people are way collecting less than 1/2 that.
floridorito | 8 hours ago
My mother gets $18K a year.
boner79 | 8 hours ago
Same here. No one is collecting anywhere near $100k in SS benefits.
floridorito | 7 hours ago
They're assuming a married couple - both still alive and both having been high earners. And it feels like a real penalty for being widowed/divorced/single since the majority of expenses especially post-retirement (like housing) aren't variable.
Dr-McLuvin | 3 hours ago
Two people working for 30 years and both maxing out the SS cap to earn >100k in SS benefits is extremely rare.
A quick google search shows it’s like 0.05% of couples. 1/2000.
weristjonsnow | 8 hours ago
The average are collecting like 30k/yr
Aggravating-Duck-891 | 7 hours ago
.05% of the recipients per the article. Average is currently about $24,350.
Special_Ad712 | 8 hours ago
Because you count in terms of household. Wife and husband have SS, which can easily eclipse 100k.
iamdense | 4 hours ago
Not really, the maximum benefit per person is $5181, so $62,172 per person, if they wait until 70. Both people in a married couple getting this is pretty rare.
Sea-Ambition-451 | 8 hours ago
or, add SS for 4 people and
it's
OVER 200k!
to be honest, 50k per person sounds really rough.
Special_Ad712 | 8 hours ago
There isn’t polyamory available for households. I guess we can count Utah, but I’m guessing all parts of a Mormon power quad won’t be earning near the top of the SS thresholds.
kananishino | 8 hours ago
How does this post have so many upvoted?
boner79 | 8 hours ago
Generational warfare. The internet doing a good job at making the youngs hate Boomers.
USMCActiveToReserve | 7 hours ago
No one needs the internet to hate boomers. Their own actions have done that.
CarlosHDanger | 8 hours ago
A cap on benefits will just result in retirees drawing their social security earlier. There is currently a benefit attached to waiting to age 70 to begin collecting. For a top earner, the max benefit he/she can collect at age 70 is $5,181 per month. (X12=$62,172 per year). If I am married and our maximum SS recovery is capped at $100K we are either going to get a divorce (thereby preserving $24,000 per year) or just start drawing closer to age 65 since there is no longer a benefit to holding off until age 70. So, this measure seems penny wise and pound foolish.
A real solution is to take away the earnings cap for wages. SS should be taxed on all wages and not just everything below $184,500.
tix4soccer | 7 hours ago
It's crazy how ignorant folks are.
Just spend 5 mins in the comments section and people will be rabid about something that is just not true.
vinyl1earthlink | 6 hours ago
They're talking two-income couples. I know one like this, husband owned a company, wife was a big lawyer.
CobraPony67 | 5 hours ago
Even those people should have an option to opt out for the good of the program. If a social security check is pennies to you, you don't need it. I know you paid into it, but you also paid into insurance and property taxes, but you don't expect that money back.
sierra-soul | 2 hours ago
It was combined for a married couple
Key_Bee1544 | 8 hours ago
That's not why. It's because we gave massive tax breaks to rich assholes and the assholes in the White House have absolutely zero fiscal discipline, which dovetails with having a bunch of lapdogs in Congress. No individual Social Security payment makes an ounce of difference.
Consistent_Laziness | 8 hours ago
The biggest problem is law makers are incentivized for doing popular things. Such as tax breaks and maintaining social programs.
They are harmed by doing things that help the country fiscally and harm the people. Such as taxation increases or reduction in benefits.
So which do we think the assholes are going to do? Obviously whatever gets them elected. Even if that means it harms the country fiscally. And that’s exactly what has been happening the last 75 or arguably more years. There’s no incentive to fix it because the fix will piss off voters.
If we had term limits and not have career politicians then they would be less concerned about the next election and do what needed to be done for the country, even if it pissed people off. But that won’t happen. Since congressmen are literally always campaigning.
CorporatismIsCancer | 7 hours ago
It’s also that the taxes are direct and the benefits are abstracted by layers of governance
Consistent_Laziness | 7 hours ago
Sure.
Within my long unnecessary post, only one thing matters. Politicians are not incentivized to run the country in a healthy manner. Term limits could help that instead of making law based on what would get them more votes.
The people will never say “you know what? Our deficit is too high and our revenue is too low for our spending. We should vote someone in that will tax us more”. Never will happen. Even though it’s what we need.
Almost like forcing my son to eat his peas before he can have ice cream. He doesn’t want to but it’s good for him and he needs to do it.
Damn it another long unnecessary post. Sorry.
different_option101 | 7 hours ago
It’s not because of tax breaks. It’s because the system is literally a Ponzi scheme by design.
glorifindel | 8 hours ago
And besides, they paid into it! Just like we are today
CorporatismIsCancer | 7 hours ago
Surely that means we will also be payed out right?
USMCActiveToReserve | 7 hours ago
Past results are not an indicator of future performance.
CorporatismIsCancer | 7 hours ago
Yet that’s the only justification for this Ponzi scheme
USMCActiveToReserve | 6 hours ago
Abolish Social Security, give freedom back to the people.
jawshoeaw | an hour ago
The point of social security is that it’s not a tax. That’s why it historically has been so well supported. No amount of tax increases will help it and no amount of tax cuts will hurt it. In theory
Sessile-B-DeMille | 8 hours ago
I'm 68, worked for 46 years, most years I made about 10 percent below the social security cap. Starting social security at age 69, I'd be receiving $52,000 year. The only way I can think that someone could draw $100,000 would be to be a two earner couple who both made close to the maximum and worked to normal retirement age, or later.
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the average social security check this year Is $2,083.
squish042 | 7 hours ago
Just another corporate media headline blaming the victim. Boomers are an easy target.
Johnnadawearsglasses | 6 hours ago
I mean if two people put that much into it over that long a period of time, so what. What is the purpose of it otherwise. Why would you begrudge people receiving the benefits they funded, at levels that actually suck relative to the contributions. Generational warfare nonsense.
Sea-Ambition-451 | 8 hours ago
> wealthy boomers
if you pay into it all your life, then you obviously deserve your share when you're retired. Period.
The problem is the ridiculously incompetent federal government, stupid "tax breaks" and frankly, ball rooms.
Darkpriest667 | 6 hours ago
You weren't paying into it, you were paying for beneficiaries at the time you were working, that's always how it worked.
themiracy | 7 hours ago
Too many ballrooms, not enough balls (to actually solve problems).
PopeyeTheSailorTrans | 4 hours ago
The MAX one can draw from SS, waiting to age 70 is 5181....that's not 100K per year - maybe if both are drawing the same. Also the problem is the current administration and republicans, establishment Dems and Oligarchs. Tax the shit out of Oligarchs and SS will be fine
lavapig_love | 8 hours ago
Lawl, no. It's because the Big Beautiful Bill with all its tax breaks for the wealthy was passed, and the wealthy are finding out that tax money pays to maintain aircraft carriers.
v12vanquish | 6 hours ago
The big beautiful bill has had nothing todo with social security, which was been predicted to go bust for decades now.
OregonHomeLove | 8 hours ago
Fake news - the max check if one waits till age 70 is $5,181 per month. War is the reason for the debt. SS and Medicare are not funded from the general US budget, they are funded by the SS tax.
cspinelive | 7 hours ago
Can we stop saying fake news? I feel like it was the start of the right’s final decline. This phrase is them proudly claiming war on facts.
v12vanquish | 6 hours ago
Actually Medicare and social security ARE funded from the general US budget.
ceciledian | 8 hours ago
Not fake. The $100k is combined income.
HegemonNYC | 8 hours ago
So what? Anyone who contributed the max gets back far less than they put in. SS is a terrible deal for the upper middle class.
Jodid0 | 8 hours ago
Wow if this was 1981 I would be shocked. But dual income barely breaking six figures is not even remotely a flex in 2026 and certainly won't make anyone rich.
floridorito | 8 hours ago
The $100K being referred to is not earned income; it's the annual amount of social security a couple could conceivably get in retirement. A retired individual who is clearing $50K+ a year on social security was a very high earner over their career.
ceciledian | 8 hours ago
I wasn’t referring to income of six figures I was referring to the Social Security benefit for a couple at 100,000+. That would be an addition to their IRA/401(k) and pension. You know, the three legged stool.
Plastic_Key_4146 | 5 hours ago
All you have to do is the lift the caps on contribution, and it's fine.
Social security is not part of the budget and does not contribute to the debt.
The headline is misleading and designed to disrupt class solidarity to further divide people.
deep_fuckin_ripoff | 3 hours ago
Or add SS/medicare tax to all types of income above your earned income.
xubax | 5 hours ago
It's not because boomers are collecting "to much. "
It's because:
Social security has been ransacked to contribute to the general budget.
And
There's a call on how much high earners have to contribute.
LolaSupreme19 | 5 hours ago
Right, blame boomers for collecting a benefit THEY PAID INTO. Don’t consider the multi-trillion dollar tax giveaways to corporations and billionaires.
laxnut90 | 2 hours ago
Boomers are the last generation that will receive more in benefits than they paid in.
Every subsequent generation will receive less than they put in until one generation starts having more children than replacement level.
Klastermon | 3 hours ago
I paid into social security for over 40 years, since I was 16. I was told time and again over those years that if I had been able to just take that money and invest it, I would be worth more than twice what I am now. I’m 77 years old and I get about $2,300 a month from Social Security, and I still have to pay taxes out of that.. (That’s about $27k a year in case your math skills are poor) try to live on $27k a year… and then come whine to me. Where do I sign up for this $100,000?
Icy-Special- | 2 hours ago
My dad is in the same boat. You guys aren't getting anything close to 100,000k on benefits and pay or any combination of.
Nursing homes and assisted living cost the whole house you're living in.
Groceries are ridiculous.
You guys are getting hit the worst right now. No one is talking about it.
clipd_dead_stop_fall | 8 hours ago
No idea where anyone is collecting $100k per year off social security. Maybe combined with Medicare, but unless I am mistaken, those are two different funds and have different taxes feeding them.
This isn't a problem with any particular group collecting benefits. It's a problem with a certain political party actively working to destroy Social Security and have the general public fighting with each otherwhile they sit back and watch. This is by design and it's been in play since at least the Reagan administration.
Giant_leaps | 8 hours ago
Yeah it's not the trillions spent on defense each year it's also not the trillions in tax avoidance from corporations and billionaires it's also not the blatant corruption in politicians who accepted thinly veiled bribes.
polar_nopposite | 7 hours ago
Oh sure, go ahead and complain about the national debt and SS recipients in the same breath, while the (quantifiably) most corrupt administration in our country's history pillages our wealth, passes trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy, and wages an illegal war of choice that is economically crippling the working class directly. Very cool.
vermiliondragon | 7 hours ago
Kind of misleading headline since they're talking about couples receiving over $100k. The maximum benefit in 2026, if you delayed collecting until age 70, is $5181 per month or $62,172/year. $62k per person isn't that insane in this economy.
mabhatter | 6 hours ago
I'm shocked it's that high. I thought it was only like $3k per month max.
vermiliondragon | 6 hours ago
That's only if you delay it past your full retirement age to age 70. The maximum at FRA (67 for those reaching that age now) is $4152
gemfountain | 5 hours ago
National debt is growing because of cheeto head and his warmongers stealing from our country. They fill the pockets of their family members and pac donors while pointing fingers at the elderly recieving the benefits they paid for themselves with hard work. The grifting fingers have borrowed and stolen what Americans worked for and point the grubby finger back at them. Disgusting.
erranttv | 5 hours ago
We’re not in debt because of social security benefits. We’re in this level of debt because of Trump tax cuts, tariffs, and wars. Talk about missing the point.
Pezdrake | 4 hours ago
Despite what the title suggests, the problem isn't the elderly collecting Social Security, it's the refusal to make revenue adjustments to improve it.
gknight702 | an hour ago
How bout because politicians have been corrupt for generations, passing laws that save their donors billions and spending all our tax dollars and an extra 2 trillion every year on everything but benefiting the populace
ThisIsAbuse | 8 hours ago
Getting 100K - uh uh.
A tiny tiny fraction of 50 million retired couples get this.
According to best estimates the average for a couple in the USA is about 40-50K a year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Highlights below on ONE plan to save SS (note it goes beyond wages cap to include wealth)
Senator Bernie Sanders' plan to save and expand Social Security centers on the Social Security Expansion Act, which aims to extend the program's solvency for 75 years by requiring high-income earners to pay more into the system.
Key Elements of the Plan
Lifting the Payroll Tax Cap: Applies the Social Security payroll tax to all earnings—including investment and business income—for individuals making over $250,000, leaving 91% to 93% of American households with no tax increase.
Investment Income: It explicitly targets unearned income—such as capital gains and dividends—by subjecting them to the same 6.2% tax rate used for standard payroll contributions above that threshold.
Increasing Benefits: Boosts payouts across the board by roughly $2,400 a year ($200 a month) for recipients.
Improving Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLAs): Updates the formula using the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) to better account for rapidly rising health care and prescription drug costs.
Opposing Benefit Cuts: Vigorously rejects raising the retirement age, reducing benefits, or privatizing the program.
WillTheyKickMeAgain | 7 hours ago
Even if you max contributed every year, the most you would draw from Social Security is a little over $60K. That seems fair. This article is misleading trash.
Social Security is not going broke. Its problems can easily be solved by removing the salary cap.
prickwhowaspromised | 6 hours ago
Lmao. This headline sounds they’re gonna try and turn us on people who earned their social security and are collecting it rather than the oligarchs and the ruling class for destroying it
0bfuscatory | 5 hours ago
Exactly!
Their first reference is the CATO institute.
Then they go on to compare the money
put in to the expected total
payout starting in 2027.
What they don’t mention is that the median worker would have $3 million if their payments had been put into the S&P500. And the richer workers would have $4-$5 million.
They’re laying the groundwork for
their next diversionary scape goat.
blazeit420casual | 8 hours ago
Oh no someone is collecting a lot of Social Security because they worked and paid into it their entire lives!
Good. They should be getting more. Tax the fucking billionaires.
Ambitious-Hat41 | 8 hours ago
It’s not the people collecting social security that are the problem - these are people that paid into the system their entire lives and will likely receive from the system far less than what they would have been able to have earned if hey had been allowed to invest the money on their own. Point your anger and your blame where it belongs - at the rich and powerful who have bankrupted this country through their corruption.
playhurt4 | 5 hours ago
not a boomer - but don’t blame them across the board for poor leadership, malfeasance and obfuscation. remove the cap and increase SS tax by 1% and buy another 25 years or so. this looks so much worse in the near future where there will be no middle class funding SS.
Terrible_Champion298 | 5 hours ago
It’s just some clown playing agist jerk because they think karma points are more important than intellect.
warrends | 3 hours ago
Thank you for this. I am a boomer, the very last year to be eligible to join that club. Not taking SS for quite a while. Current plan is to wait until I turn 72. We’ll see.
But $100k a year?? Ok I just briefly read the article. That is really misleading. What they actually say is $100k **per couple**. That’s completely different. Might be a small thing but it’s mighty important to have the right context.
I thought that the max SS benefit was something like $4k per month. It may be a little more but maxing at $50k to $60k per year for an individual is reasonable. However that looks like it’ll be going down because it’s already too late. CBO and a lot of others did that math a couple of decades ago.
deep_fuckin_ripoff | 3 hours ago
Or just let SS invest its funds in the S&P500 and it’ll last forever.
dingalingdongdong | 3 hours ago
What is with all these stupid posts lately trying to convince people any part of SS is a problem. Boomers withdrawing their entitlement isn't the problem. The ridiculous cap is.
BlaxicanXIX | 8 hours ago
That isn't why, to be clear. I enjoy shooting on boomers as much as the next person but I will never blame the recipients of the social safety nets (that we as a society promised them) for receiving those benefits.
We are growing broke because the wealthy don't pay their share of taxes and we waste money on frivolous bullshit like corporate welfare and foreign Wars
NoConversation6711 | 7 hours ago
Well, us boomers will be dead soon and then the whole system will correct itself. Or maybe not. I and my fellow old folks have worked and paid into the system most of our lives so yes, I’d like my money back. Younger people who don’t like the system vote in people who are like minded. I believe you will find, in the end, they will all be corrupted by the system regardless of which side of the aisle they are on. Anyway 40 trillion in debt is a national travesty and a big danger to the county but Social Security is not the governments money. It’s money that belongs to every worker who paid into the system.
Dexter_McThorpan | 7 hours ago
Yes. It's definitely that and not the president blowing 160 million on golf. Or all the wars. Or boomers voting for people who literally campaign on screwing over next generation so rich people don't have to pay taxes.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/your-social-security-benefits-could-be-cut-by-a-quarter-in-2032-heres-what-to-know
Your Social Security benefits could be cut by a quarter in 2032. Here's what to ...
CorndogFiddlesticks | 6 hours ago
they pax taxes on it, which is morally reprehensible.
The whole thing needs to start over: forced investment by the government that is held for each person and is theirs, not some giant pool. Fix it, or it will die....just a question of how long before that happens.
OneOfAKind2 | 5 hours ago
Social Security is going broke due to mismanagement and nothing more. Raise the caps for contributions according to income and problem solved. The US debt going sky high is mostly to do with Inmate #P01135809's idiotic tax cuts for the rich.
Mdhdrider | 4 hours ago
$62,000 is the maximum a person can make on social security. Far cry from $100,000. If Congress had removed the limit on the income that social security tax is paid on the entire solvency could have been solved in the 90’s. It would still fix most of it now.
Imaginary_Manner_556 | 4 hours ago
Stop shitting on Social Security. Retirees have always collected more than they paid. That's how it works.
Focus attention on the cap and the GOP trying to destroy it.
Your rage bait post helps the GOP dismantle the program
Sherm | 4 hours ago
This is propaganda to try and convince us to go after Grandma's $1500/month by making us see her as a fat cat exploiting us. Make it a benefit for poor people, then it's welfare, then they can start in about how the people collecting it are parasites, just like they did with every other benefit. Meanwhile nobody ever stops to wonder why we're still getting poorer while billionaires suck the life out of us.
OkAcanthaceae9859 | an hour ago
Concerned? Then quit voting for congressional candidates who vote to give tax breaks to the wealthy, to corporations, to churches and to internationals.........
Ok_Principle5942 | 8 hours ago
Tax rates have been cut on every income group for the past 45 years. At the same time, government social spending has massively increased.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-average-federal-tax-rates-all-households
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=7Eso
Americans pay a significantly smaller share of their wages in taxes compared to peer countries.
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/tax-wedge.html
The rich aren't going to fund your services for you. No other country works that way. Americans need to understand they they are going to pay more in taxes, even at median and low incomes, if they want government services.
DelphiTsar | 6 hours ago
There is more than enough money. If they fixed taxes decades ago when they realized it wouldn't be perpetually solvent we'd be paying less than we are now.
For 12% of the defense budget the government could build/give away US growth + 1% a year houses. Yes 12% of defense budget you could eventually give every American a free house (it'd take a while).
It'd be a pittance of the wealthy's stream to provide all the services. Meanwhile young families necessities have risen much faster than inflation.
HSWTulsa | 8 hours ago
I paid into this system for 40+ years. Hell if I’m okay with not getting the benefit of those payments. SS is not a welfare program, and means testing benefits would change the rules after the game was played.
deHack | 7 hours ago
No one anywhere collects $100K in Social Security per year. The median check is $1675.00 per month. If you wait to age 70, the very most you can collect is $5181.00 per month and most don't. The maximum check at age 67 is$4,152.00 per month. No gets $100,000 that's just ragebait bullshit.
Background-Willow-67 | 8 hours ago
This is total bullshit. The max you can get is about 5100 a month if you wait till 70 AND made enough money to put into SS at the max. This comes to 62K or so.
formerNPC | 6 hours ago
So when I start collecting I should feel guilty because I earned it after working for decades? What is the point of this post. How dare you work your ass off and then receive a check every month! I must have wondered into the millennial Reddit where they blame the boomers for all their problems.
Throwupmyhands | 3 hours ago
Stop trying to turn the generations against each other when some simple policy tweaks making the ultra wealthy give back to society would fix everything.
daftbucket | 2 hours ago
This. The boomers dont have the money, the psychopath parasites in the 1% do.
dcwhite98 | 2 hours ago
Social Security exists because they paid into it. Blaming them for its downfall because they are getting their money back? Idiocy at its finest.
WisePotatoChip | 2 hours ago
This is just the Trumper’s fostering generational discontent. The same scummy politicians that robbed Social Security are the same scummy politicians that allowed the transfer of wealth in 2008 that prevents you from getting a home.
Spottedinthewild | 8 hours ago
It’s not because of what’s being paid out, it’s because billionaires pay the same dollar amount as people making $200,000.
Remove the cap and it will be solvent indefinitely.
Different-Set4505 | 8 hours ago
This post trying to make people working to get social security is stupid. It’s the government mismanagement and failure to plan ahead is the problem
CapnFlatPen | 7 hours ago
No it is not because of that. It's because wealth is being hoarded by assholes with billions of dollars. This article title is designed to make us fight each other. Don't believe it. A could hundred K is NOTHING compared to the money hoarded by people like Bezos and Musk.
spondgbob | 6 hours ago
You can’t make me upset at retirees getting $100k. But I will be upset at someone making $100,000,000 in a year and only paying their first $184,000 in income tax (or something like tha
bgmjeff | 6 hours ago
Just abolish the income cap where rich people stop paying in. Oh yea, politicians would be over the cap so they aren't voting that into law. Politicians are all scumbags, sick greedy scumbags.both parties
Mr_Tort_Feasor | 5 hours ago
No SSI benefits are $100K a year. They must be assuming a married couple, both of whom waited until full retirement age or older to start drawing benefits, and both of whom earned more than average over their careers.
National-Plastic8691 | 5 hours ago
That isn't why "social security is going broke". The senate and house have been raiding the social security program for years, perhaps decades. If they hadn't we'd have a surplus.
Let's raid the retirement accounts of the Senate and House representatives themselves now
outer--monologue | 4 hours ago
Downvoted for misleading headline. Mods, can we ban this sort of garbage and junk reporting?
The problem is not that workers are getting what they were promised and paid into. I can't believe I had to explain this to anyone...
cdazzo1 | 3 hours ago
Oh, so you're telling me a system designed to require an ever increasing contributing base so current beneficiaries collect the contributions of future beneficiaries is a bad idea?
I am sincerely shocked!
BetweenTheRoots | 3 hours ago
Yea sure, it's boomer's fault, not the rich people paying barely any taxes or barely paying their workers or private equity buying up all the housing property or private interests trying to turn every service into a subscription
BeenDragonn | 2 hours ago
So glad I avoided having kids.
Kids would cement myself in working until dropping dead
But that's Republicans plan. Ban abortion so we stuck with kids and definitely can't retire
goonwild18 | 2 hours ago
You mean they’re getting the benefits they paid for? That is exactly what is supposed to happen. What you really mean is people are getting what they are entitled to - they were forced to give the government that money.
retroafric | an hour ago
More bullshit propaganda trying to create a generational divide to then destroy Social Security.
No individual Social Security beneficiary receives $100,000 per year, but a tiny fraction of retired couples (about 0.05%) combine to receive $100,000 or more annually.
If we waved a magic wand and cut off ALL benefits (I mean 100%) to this tiny number of people, it wouldn’t amount to a fart in a hurricane next to our 40 Trillion debt.
Jumpy_Childhood7548 | 8 hours ago
Lol! Wealthy boomers? Their median net worth is about $410k, which is not enough for an average stay in assisted living, at the end of life for a couple. Btw, $100k in benefits? According to?
NotACatVideo | 8 hours ago
The Social security fund has been ‘running out of money in a few years’ for the last 50 years. This is happening because our elected officials won’t deal with the problem properly so they pass a short term measure to kick the can down the road for a while. Republicans want to solve this by eliminating all social programs that do not help business
DanDanDan0123 | 8 hours ago
This seems to be a propaganda article. Nothing said about Congress borrowing from the SS funds, the many wars that didn’t need to be fought, the reduced taxing of corporations and billionaires. All the blame is on the SS recipients!
lisabutz | 6 hours ago
I expect better critical thinking from this sub than a bunch of blamers. We’ll see if my comment is removed, I’ve never been able to comment in this sub.
LuxuriousBubbles | 3 hours ago
This is so misleading... Doom clickers unite.
If you go back and look at the history of our own government robbing social security funds, both sides of the aisle, you'll find yet again, this is bs. The boomers aren't the issue. It's the leadership robbing their people.
Iroquois_Plisken01 | 8 hours ago
Sweet. I can't wait to NOT have any social security that I have been paying into since I started working at the age of 17. Nothing like keeping our promises. What a freaking Ponzi scheme
Congenital-Optimist | 6 hours ago
Even when you believe the worst possible "Social Security is bankrupt!" projections, it just means that social security payments will be 25% smaller than currently expected. Stop falling into fearmongering and Social Security privatization propaganda.
NashChemE | 6 hours ago
Don't accept this. They're pushing this narrative so we'll roll over and accept even less for our taxes.
Social security doesn't even contribute to the debt. It is funded directly from paychecks and 0% of social security comes from borrowing money.
CaliTexan22 | 7 hours ago
Blaming a few high earners is nonsense. Can’t see the article, but how many are drawing $100K a year?
“The average retirement benefit is approximately $2,008.31 per month (August 2025), which translates to roughly $24,000 annually.”
Everyone who has any familiarity with the system knows there are too few workers paying in compared to retirees taking money out. And life expectancies have grown, so many SS recipients take out more over their lifetimes than they pay in.
SS is already progressive - it rewards low earners at the expense of high earners. It’s not designed as a welfare system, and it will lose support if it becomes even more like welfare.
The solution has been obvious for years - higher premiums from workers and employees, lower benefits for retirees and a later starting date to draw benefits. It will be some combination of these. Those in Congress know this, but believe voters will punish them for fixing the problem.
muffledvoice | 7 hours ago
If they removed the income cap for SS contributions and made the super rich pay an amount commensurate with their income. SS would be funded for another 30 years.
CaliTexan22 | 7 hours ago
If they paid in more, they’d collect more. Doesn’t solve the problem, unless you’re just proposing to steal that extra money they’re going to pay and give it to someone else.
getmeoutoftax | 8 hours ago
It’s basically a fact at this point that taxes have to be raised. I don’t know how any fiscal conservative can be opposed to it at this point. You can give the generic “we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” but that is not realistic. You’d have to brutally slash entitlements in that case, which will obviously never happen. There is really no alternative here.
Distinct-Response907 | 7 hours ago
It’s beyond that- we must increase taxes and cut spending. Politicians will do neither of those, much less both.
sjcvolvo | 6 hours ago
Maybe we stop Base Line Budgeting, every department gets a raise 8 %. How would you be doing with 8% increase yearly? It is a spending problem!
lone-guyland | 7 hours ago
30 year old here. They paid into it, nothing wrong with receiving what’s been paid in. I’m more upset with the cap - if we got rid of the cap, there would ahve been enough for everyone. It’s a social program, not an ROI investment vehicle
giraloco | 8 hours ago
As usual conservatives encourage people to fight with each other instead so they don't fight the ultra rich and corporations that don't pay enough taxes. Don't fall for this trap. People have been saying the same thing about SS for decades and blaming previous generations.
Jaded-Midnight774 | 7 hours ago
The majority of American problems can be fixed by taxing the rich! All that money came mostly from tax breaks and loophole they use... Its time to let the majority of American get a piece of the pie and not let the fat cat billionaires keep it all for themselves!!
Mysterious-Eagle8051 | 3 hours ago
We paid into Social Security our whole working lives as our government had the money deducted for our future social security deducted from our paychecks. It’s not the boomers fault that the plan was designed this way.
Crombus_ | an hour ago
No, the debt is growing because of Trump's disastrous tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and his administration's rampant deficit spending. People collecting their benefits are not to blame.
LibbyOfDaneland | an hour ago
the boomers didn't even start out paying into it. gen x has been paying into it since we were kids, and the boomers have been benefiting. keep in mind, that the boomers were shitty parents to us, grossly absent, didn't help with a single thing, and now, when gen x is getting ready to retire, the money won't be there for us. the boomers just got handed every damn thing and gen x gets f'd yet again.
Additional-Brief-273 | 8 hours ago
If you paid into the system when you reach retirement age you should be able to collect what you paid into. If we need to start taxing billionaires to get this fixed so be it.
francokitty | 8 hours ago
People don't get $100k social security checks each year. What they get is more like $1000 to $3500 monthly. That is not a lot of money each year to live off. And it is taxed. And we paid into social security our whole working lives. I paid in for 45 years. It is not a hand out program.
1888okface | 7 hours ago
Also curious where the 100k figure comes from.
Snoo23533 | 6 hours ago
Second sentence of the article "Some of America’s oldest are eligible for more than $100,000 a year in combined Social Security benefits". That would be 8333/month before income taxes.
WhyAreWeHere1996 | 8 hours ago
Remove the salary cap, apply social security taxes to other forms of income, and make claimants file wealth returns so those who are already rich with personal retirement savings aren’t getting free money from the government.
StevieWonder557 | 7 hours ago
I've got 40 credits and according to the IRS when I retire at at 67, will get $847 a month. Not sure where this article says there's 100K in benefits for retirees?
northpalmetto | 7 hours ago
The article points out the shrinking workforce that is necessary to fund current Social Security payouts. This is due in part to the shrinking birthrate and smaller number of younger workers. This is also due to the economic trend of trying to do more with fewer workers (think layoffs, dearth of new jobs etc), with various forms of AI agents being the latest, most aggressive implementation.
If various AI agents, such as customer service agents, robo-taxis, robotic trucks etc. are analogous to old fashioned, warm blooded workers, then they can be taxed in the same way. Collect payroll taxes for AI agents, including Medicare and Social Security. That may be a good source of new government revenue. It's not as if AI agents will ever collect Medicare and Social Security.
dvdmaven | 6 hours ago
Must be nice, I'm getting less than $25k after 38 years of paying in. I made a point of investing similar amounts for my entire career and my MRI from my traditional IRA is about five times my SS.
brent_superfan | 6 hours ago
This is the disaster that’s coming next.
Social Security Trust Fund breaks even (taxes < liabilities) in 2035. All beneficiaries will get a benefit cut.
All those boomers will receive less money per month. Yikes.
Mind you, Social Security was created to address elder poverty. Folks in their 80’s are not exactly the most employable folks. Employers are least likely to hire them.
We will have an enormous wave of elder poverty unless something is done. Peoples moms, dads, aunties and uncles are going to be in serious trouble.
mildlyannoyed32 | 6 hours ago
It’s simple plan for without it, that’s what I’m doing. I’m considering turning off paying into it since it won’t be there or not what it should be.
jan1of1 | 5 hours ago
what they fail to mention: When social security was created in 1935 the life expectancy for men and women was much shorter than it is today (woman was 64 and men was 60). As a result people are living longer thus collecting longer.
Yes it is true that they are collecting more than they put in but it isn't do to greed. It is due to the fact that Congress has refused to get off its duff and do its job as it pertains to keeping social security and medicare viable and sustainable.
Significant_Mine9465 | 5 hours ago
we were told it won't be there when we retire.so we buckled down invested heavy paid our mortgage. we paid into it.it is not a gift we worked for it.it is our money.dont understand why you don't get it.
Much-Anything7149 | 5 hours ago
Are they expected to reject the payments because they were born into a post WW2 economic boom unmatched in modern history that made them all real estate millionaires? The same group that thinks kids these days just aren't interested in owning a home, world travel or driving sports cars because they afforded all those on a part time job.
well-informedcitizen | 5 hours ago
True, and tempting to put that Boomer Bait out there but don't fall for the redirection. They're slashing and underfunding social security. This is trademark Republican "starve the beast" tactics
Garrett42 | 4 hours ago
That's not how social security works. Social security was never supposed to have a massive slush fund. It is designed to be a direct tax to retiree stipend. When the money "runs out" then the system will function as intended. Workers work, and a portion of that money will go toward those that are retired. There is an individual cap to not overburden workers, but the money at the end gets divided by all of our retired people.
If you spent money instead of saving/investing fore retirement because you didn't know how the system works, that's a little on you. If you're unhappy with the benefits and taxes, then this might help to bring the current retirees more in line politically with the young. It's not a coincidence that older people vote so much differently when they are insulated from the economic decisions affecting workers, this might be a good chance for older people to feel a direct consequence of constantly squeezing younger and working people.
Here is a list of super easy fixes that retirees as a voting block are against, but might support if they see their checks fluctuating;
Lowering wealth inequality, uncapping social security tax, unions to push up worker wages, any policy that drives median wages up or demand side economics.
Immigration - more workers means a larger pool to tax, immigration is free money for pension systems.
Blackant71 | 4 hours ago
Getting rid of people who pay billions in taxes and don't get any of it back isn't going to help either. Can also eliminate the cap on social security contributions.
lagan_derelict | 4 hours ago
Whatever happened to paying a reasonable insurance premium and just being glad we don't have to file a claim? Instead, everyone from failing businesses to poor people upside down in truck payments has ruined it for the rest of us. Solution:
Fix the economy and the rules so that nobody feels compelled to cheat, lie, and steal, and prosecute the anti-American assholes who do it anyway.
Social security is supposed to be a safety net, not a tidy nest egg for one's three times great grandchildren.
B-Glasses | 3 hours ago
I’ve been paying into it since I was 16 and I’m now nearly 33. That’s 17 years of “investing” in my retirement that I’ll probably just lose altogether. Our country sucks
-_-k | 3 hours ago
I'm a millennial and will never see the decades of deposits I've made.
dugin556 | 3 hours ago
I've worked for wealthy people almost my entire adult life. I couldn't even begin to count how many calls I've overheard from extravagantly wealthy people fighting, and belittling, social security call center employees. You see, these people really don't have much else to do after pickle-ball, 3 Martini lunches. It's a pretty rough life.
They don't need it, and if they actually stopped to consider that their greed is actually going to hurt the next generation.....HAHAHAHAHAH. Nah, man. Most of them, honestly don't care what happens to the rest of us, as long as the numbers go up and to the right.
Granted, I'm a bit cynical on the subject. I've seen so....much....waste, and general indifference concerning the "rest of us".
Witty_Ad_898 | 3 hours ago
For what it’s worth, we’ve had numerous proposals to fix SS and the budget, but the GOP has blocked everything for decades. This all goes back to the Reagan (R) era.
sweatboxy | 3 hours ago
Of course, if the Republicans weren’t funding a massive war machine while giving massive tax breaks to the rich while defunding social security maybe there wouldn’t be a problem caring for Americans? And maybe instead of cherry-picking statistics and getting info from extreme right wing think tanks, do some actual research. Fortune used to be thought of as a reputable source until Trump conned them so easily about his own wealth.
cantrecallthelastone | 3 hours ago
This is the stupidest problem of all of the US government financial problems. Social Security could be funded forever with a very simple policy change. I make more than 200k per year as do at least 15-16 million other US taxpayers. I made this much for several years before I realized that I stop paying social security tax in the middle of the year. Because there is a cap where no tax is paid after you’ve earned 178k. Someone who makes a million per year doesn’t pay in after March. It took a colleague pointing it out for me to realize it. Because the deduction makes zero difference in my life. Which is probably true for the majority of people in this tax bracket. Do away with the cap and you will have 15-16 million people continuing to pay all year long. If the cap was eliminated social security would be well funded for a very long time. But it won’t happen because it is labeled as a “tax increase”. Which it is. But it only affects the wealthy. And is unlikely to be a burden for any of them.
formerly_gruntled | 3 hours ago
Isn't the real issue that the 1% don't pay into Social Security tax on all their income? First, it is capped at $184,500 of salary. Then the 1% don't pay any social security tax on their non-payroll income. Which is really just a dodge to pay lower taxes on non-salary income that in their case replaces salary. They pay themselves in low tax ways, that shouldn't rally be under taxed, because it's their income instead of payroll.
Themanciple6521 | 3 hours ago
The very highest SS monthly benefit amount is $5181 per month IF you wait until 70 to take retirement benefits. So the headline is incorrect. No one is receiving $100k a year in social security payments.
ModerateDataDude | 2 hours ago
Not to mention all the divorcees that are collecting the benefits of their former husbands, even if there were multiple marriages. This means that a single man (only stating it as a man as for most boomers, only the men worked) there might be multiple people taking the same check every month. We in later generations will either see very little of what we put in or we will see the printing of much money to cover the payouts. Whatever they choose will have the same effect. Said simply, boomers have pillaged the fund and there will be less left for those after.
Furdinand | 2 hours ago
The article frames $730k in lifetime SS benefits after $200k in lifetime contributions as an unearned windfall for retirees but it's actually a terrible return on 40-50 years of contributions. If I had started saving and investing 12% of my income starting at 16, I'd have millions even if I invested in something more conservative than an index fund.
Expecting retirees,, current or future, to receive a worse ROI than what we get now should be politically radioactive. If benefit face cuts, voters are going to have to decide if they're willing to lose $200k in order to "win" the culture war.
Beautiful_Finger4566 | an hour ago
the solution is to raise the retirement age
by design, half the people contributing to Social Security are supposed to have died before collecting any benefits
as it stands, average lifespan keeps increasing but the retirement age barely moved
and now we're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for people to live an extra year
Social Security was never supposed to be a retirement plan... these people had 40+ years to save up for their retirement
TxTechnician | an hour ago
What a joke of a headline. Not worth reading the article.
They paid into. They should benefit from it. Weather you are flat broke or a millionaire. Sorry bud, that was the deal when it was created.
It also pays for kids who have had parents pass away.
LwyrUpAmrca | an hour ago
It’s become increasingly clear that we have to take desperate measures to stabilize the debt situation. Taxes will have to go up and spending will have to be cut. As for Social Security, we have to think about sacrifices. Not benefit cuts or work requirements but we need to get rid of the cap and introduce a sliding scale of benefits from the top down as well as auditing SSDI
Electrical_Review_81 | 36 minutes ago
Bush had a plan to fix social security which pretty much all now agree would have worked and increased benefits. The dems blocked it, and then Obama could have fixed it but he did nothing. Biden could have also fixed it, he did nothing. By the way, Harris had no plan to fix it.
Creative_gal_3153 | 22 minutes ago
The US doesn't have their house in order. Carney explained the bond market the best when he says that sometimes the market will start focusing in on this. I'm no economist but the US is in so much debt it's going to start getting really real for people soon.