June 01, 2023
Source: BIgstock Social Security is toast.
So is Medicare.
Too many of us old individuals live longer, so there are not enough working people to support us.
Quickly both Social Security and Medicare will be broke.
Our political leaders do not have the guts to do anything about it. Or perhaps speak about it.
It’s easy to see why.
Just recently, France’s president, attempting to keep his country’s pension system from going broke, raised France’s retirement age from 62 to a meager 64.
People have been protesting ever since.
In America, politicians who even hint at such options get shrieked at by mistaken elders: “Don’t touch my retirement funds! You took money from my paycheck for years; that’s my money I’m getting back!”
However it’s not. It’s youths’s cash. People my age hardly ever realize that most of us now get back triple what we paid in.
When Social Security began, a government retirement strategy made financial sense. Many Americans didn’t even live up until age 65. Social Security was just for the minority who did.
Today Americans live, usually, to age 76. I’m 76. Henry Kissinger is 100. Considering that most of us live so long, there are simply not enough employees to pay for us.
Yet our vote-hungry political leaders won’t state that in public.
“Our politicians don’t have the guts to do anything about it.”
Even Donald Trump cringes, stating, “No one will lay a hand on your Medicare or your Social Security.”
The most unaware, like Sen. Bernie Sanders, even deny the apparent fact. He screams: “Social Security today is not on the line going broke!”
However it simply is. Reserve funds are forecasted to go out by 2034.
Medicare’s reserves will run out even sooner.
Of course they will. When I first got Medicare, I marvelled how no one even takes notice of expenses. Everything seems totally free.
“Get an MRI,” says my medical professional. I instantly do. I don’t ask the cost. The MRI individuals do not mention it either.
Months later, I get a complicated notice that states my MRI cost $2,625 and I must pay $83.65. Or often, nothing. Who did pay? Blue Cross? Taxpayers? The documentation is so intricate that I don’t even know.
Old people who search grocery stores to save a dollar on groceries never ever comparison buy MRIs or heart surgical treatment. “Why should I? Somebody else pays.”
As my new video shows, Medicare is a bomb with a burning fuse moving closer.
“Sooner or later, it will explode,” states financial expert Dan Mitchell of the Center for Liberty and Success. “Politicians figure oh, well, maybe it blows up in five years or 10 years or twenty years. I will not be in workplace any longer.”
Some claim raising taxes on rich people would fix the deficit, however it will not. There just aren’t adequate rich people. Even taking all the cash from every billionaire wouldn’t cover our coming personal bankruptcy.
The only service is cutting benefits, raising the age when advantages start (reasonable, given that we live longer) or, Mitchell’s choice, privatizing retirement strategies, like Australia and Chile did.
America’s politicians won’t do any of those things.
So what will occur?
“The just other alternative is printing cash,” states Mitchell.
“I think that’s what America will do,” I tell Mitchell. “We’ll be like Zimbabwe.” Zimbabwe’s president printed money to fund his budget deficit. When the currency collapsed in 2009, Zimbabwe was printing hundred trillion-dollar expenses.
Yet politicians do not learn. In the existing financial obligation ceiling deal, Speaker Kevin McCarthy got President Joe Biden to “claw back” unused COVID relief funds and keep two years of non-defense discretionary spending roughly flat.
That’s a little development. However Biden wishes to invest a record $7 trillion next year.
McCarthy said Medicare and Social Security were “completely off the table.”
So the programs are still doomed.
“Eventually bad things will occur to elderly people,” discusses Mitchell. “The federal government will either cut their benefits or all of a sudden start rationing health care. Or repayment rates will be so low that you won’t be able to find a doctor or health center to treat you.”