The Ponzi schemes that is Social Security is, not surprisingly, facing some financial issues. Apparently somebody has pilfered the lock box because the program is going to be dipping into its reserves:
Medicare’s finances were downgraded in a new report from the program’s trustees Tuesday, while the projection for Social Security’s stayed the same as last year.
Medicare’s hospital insurance fund will be depleted in 2026, said the trustees who oversee the benefit program in an annual report. That is three years earlier than projected last year.
This year, like last year, Social Security’s trustees said the program’s two trust funds would be depleted in 2034.
For the first time since 1982, Social Security has to dip into the trust fund to pay for the program this year.
This shouldn’t surprise anybody. The entire idea behind Social Security, forcing employees to put money into a government account so they can withdraw from it when they reach an arbitrarily defined age (which continues to increase), is impossible to maintain with a deflationary currency. An employee who puts a dollar into an account in 1960 will only withdraw $0.12 worth of purchasing power in 2018. Under these conditions either the amount of money available to retirees has to be increased, which will deplete the account quickly, or the retiree cannot be given the same purchasing power that they deposited (which, in effect, means their purchasing power was stolen from them).
But inflation isn’t the only issue facing Social Security. Ponzi schemes require a constantly increasing number of participants. With the birth rate declining rapidly in the United States, there aren’t going to be as many workers as there once were so the number of people paying into Social Security will diminish while the number of people extracting from Social Security will increase.
The bottom line is, regardless of what politicians claim, Social Security is doomed.