I think a lot about the future. I think a lot about getting a job, getting out of said job and ultimately, getting out of life. I also think about Social Security, the federal program that pays monthly benefits to disabled people and anyone more than 62 years old. Social security is getting a 2.5% cost-of-living increase, about $50 more per month, which will ultimately increase taxes for the young working class, raising our national debt and shoving most of the financial burden onto current college students. This means we will have reduced access to Social Security the moment we take the first step into the wintry, senile bookend of our lives.
According to the Social Security Administration, this increase will supposedly benefit the 70.6 million people receiving Social Security benefits as of 2023. That’s more than one-fifth of the U.S. population. And honestly, if these guys were getting their fair share and living comfortably with this increase, I might not be as vindictive — but they are not.
Many Social Security recipients report living incredibly paycheck-to-paycheck, penny pinching on things like vegetables because of the insufficient payout. Even Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley admits this increase is ineffective against recipients’ living costs as well as their medical costs! Around 80% of the Social Security recipients are seniors, many of whom have increased healthcare expenses. To say the increase does not help seniors is an understatement. If I was a senior, I would be insulted! Imagine slaving away your sanctity, your sanity and your sanguinity for eight hours every day for 40-odd years wherein your bosses ten levels up will snatch much of the credit, money and fame while leaving you with much of the prickling, cynical misery, and at the end of it, the Social Security Administration will throw an ever-decreasing bag of gold coins your way, the average benefit being $1,862 per month, which they could not even be bothered to adjust for inflation. They may increase it minimally every decade or so, but it is simply not going to be enough to combat inflation and rising living costs. No wonder the old timers are always so grumpy, and no wonder the young, hip Gen Z are burned out before they have even started! Who is paying for the brunt of Social Security’s payouts? The working generation, of course: some Gen X, mostly Millennials, as well as a new batch of Gen Z recruits. Who do you think will have the least benefits from Social Security out of the three? Gen Z, of course. Gen Z is paying taxes on their current internships and jobs, they will pay taxes during their post-college careers, and all this does is keep the current retirees afloat with next to no prospects for when Gen Z reaches retirement age.
The maximum amount of earnings subject to Social Security payroll taxes is slated to increase from $168,600 in 2024 to $176,100 in 2025. That means both workers and companies will have more of their paychecks going to the government. Big businesses and billionaires might scoff and groan, but they’ll handle it. Think about how much more of an inconvenience this poses to smaller businesses and middle-class families. Of course, the poor are getting screwed over either way. To add insult to injury, Social Security’s trust funds will stop paying full benefits around 2035 and can instead only pay about 83% of benefits. The same is also true for Medicare, whose go-broke date might be as early as 2028. Instead of this tax hike, maybe we should hold onto our money, reinvest in the economy and generate revenue, which the government can use to fix housing, provide job-seeking help and more. If we cannot avoid an unceremonious tax hike, then instead of funneling money directly into the Social Security Office, we could instead channel those tax dollars into our municipal landfill of a healthcare system and plan heavily on how to allocate the spending, which will improve seniors’ lives — and eventually, Gen Z’s lives — much more tangibly.
To fix the problems with Social Security instead of letting them snowball onto Gen Z, we first must bite the bullet and raise the Social Security age. The first person to receive Social Security benefits was Ida May Fuller, a retired schoolteacher and legal secretary who filed her retirement claim at 65. The average life expectancy at birth in the 1930s was 58 for men and 62 for women. Most of that generation would be lucky to live to see these benefits. It was never intended to dole out the amount of stipends to the number of people we have today; with our $35 trillion dollar debt, we simply cannot risk paying for this. Ideally, we should raise the age by a couple of years to 69 or 70 instead of the current full retirement age of 67, a number that hasn’t changed since 1960.
However, that only solves one piece of the puzzle. The other pieces all concern living expenses. Do you expect retirees to be able to fully pay for rent and mortgages with their approximately $1,900 per month stipend? Hell no! Getting or paying off a house or apartment is too damn expensive, which is partially why one-third of Gen Zers are NEETs — not in employment, education or training. We have to find solutions to make housing more affordable through reforming zoning laws, offering tax incentives, encouraging housing construction near public transit to reduce the need to own a car, increasing public-private cooperation and other reforms so retirees won’t be living paycheck-to-paycheck just to keep themselves housed.
We also must look for more effective solutions to lower the cost of prescription drugs, insurance and hospital care, which affect seniors quite a lot. Where are the regulations putting evergreening — making small changes to a drug to extend the patent — or thicketing — when a company floods the patent office with excessive requests to screw over competitors — in the coffin? What about the breakup of insurance monopolies, which can instill power over a doctor’s practice to the detriment of their patients? Perhaps we can try and craft a more efficient healthcare system that better ensures universal health coverage instead of expecting that stipend to manage it all.
Of course, I’d be a fool if I didn’t even talk about how important it is to have a good economy, low unemployment, safe streets and even a good flow of immigration. Sometimes, there are hard truths and merciless situations we have to confront to better ourselves and the world we live in; you cannot throw money at a problem and expect it to go away, especially if that money is your salary which you slogged through a job to have, and the person throwing it away is a foolish, ineptly-run, do-nothing political machine.
And, yes, you can play an active role in fighting back against this problem. Voting for competent mayors and senators — as there’s negligible hope in the presidential elections nowadays — who will push for lower housing prices, boost the economy, maintain well-paying jobs with good security and push responsible financial legislation to tackle the national debt is the best way forward. Read their agenda and look at these politicians’ records, don’t just look at social media! You can also start saving early and be frugal with your money. 401(k)s, Roth IRAs, mutual funds and smart spending go a long way, and can be the difference between working a minimum-wage job and panhandling on the streets of Deep Ellum at age 65 or sipping Mai Tais at your two-story in Frisco at age 65.