Republicans and Democrats don’t concur on many things these days, but on one point they increasingly agree: Social Security is a mess.
“It was not good before, don’t get me wrong,” John Pfannenstein, a claims specialist, told the outlet. “But the cracks are more than beginning to show.”Waiting an hour for a bureaucrat to return a phone call is frustrating, but it pales in comparison to a $25 trillion funding hole.
And while the president might want to take credit for everything, it’s not fair to lay this disaster at his feet.“Policymakers from both parties have known for decades that Social Security’s finances are unsustainable but have consistently failed to act,” the report says, “leaving the program an estimated $25 trillion short over the next 75 years.” Blaming the president for this entitlement mess may have political appeal, but the truth is harder to swallow. After all, Social Security has not undergone serious reform since 1983.. Seven years later, I was working in the White House speechwriting office when former President George W. Bush launched a national tour promoting Social Security reform. That plan also went nowhere, largely because of partisanship.that the Bush proposal would have pushed Social Security’s insolvency back by about a decade, reduced long-term funding gaps by roughly one-third, and preserved benefits for most retirees — especially those most dependent on the program. . Unlike Social Security, 401s are not an entitlement program managed by the U.S. government. They are tax-advantaged accounts, individually and privately owned by workers, and controlled by their employers and financial advisers. Benefits are tied directly to contributions s were criticized for years for shifting responsibility from government to individuals and exposing retirement savings to the stock market, which critics, for example, has seen the share of clients with balances above $1 million double in just three years, from 1.3% in 2022 to 2.6% in the third quarter of 2025. Other firms report even higher percentages.. But those figures include workers who have only recently begun contributing and young professionals who are right on track for compounding growth. The truth is that 401s are simply a better retirement vehicle than Social Security, which likely explains why, for the first time, more than half of private-sector workers use them, according to thethat a worker who set aside the equivalent of the payroll tax into a 401-style account would accumulate roughly $719,670 by retirement. When annuitized, that portfolio could generate about $57,319 per year in retirement income. The expected Social Security benefit: $19,646.since inception, all crashes included. Fewer acknowledge that Social Security also rests on an assumption, namely, that the program remains solvent. Even if it does, expected returns are. Americans will be cashing in 401s long after Social Security has gone bust. That won’t be because Americans did not “invest” sufficiently in Social Security. It will happen because one system relies on individual ownership. The other relies on political promises and asks a shrinking workforce to fund a program that
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