Will You Be Able to Count on Social Security?
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Yeah, Social Security doom. Again, this is a topic. It’s unfortunate, but I think many people just probably tune me out because they don’t want to hear it. They want to ignore the volcano. Again, I wrote a column entitled Ignoring the Volcano. This is back in 2008, basically alluding to societies, whether it be in Santorini, Greece, whether it be at Pompeii in Italy that
people just decided to ignore the volcano that’s starting to erupt and they all died. Anyway, there’s plenty of warnings. These are not, again, black swans. These are white swans. I’ve been warning you, been warning our clients, have been warning our listeners. Prior to me even having a radio show, I’m dating myself. Back in the 1990s, I told people, my generation, Generation X, I said, listen, I said, don’t plan.
Don’t plan on getting social security, okay? If you get it, congratulations. Sure enough, sure enough, 10 years from now, 10 years from now, again, when my generation can start getting social security, it’s gonna be cut. It’s gonna be cut by 25%. I know, you don’t wanna hear it, you don’t wanna pay attention to it, continue to listen to leaders that pretend that there’s no problem.
And when I talk about leaders, I’m talking about the two leading candidates for the presidency right now. Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Not that want to do a damn thing. They want to touch it because they won’t even be around. Let’s be more unlikely they won’t be around when it happens. What do they care? Anyway, neither here nor there. I great piece that was put out there in regards to Social Security by Adam Andrzejewski from Open the Books. Try to get this into perspective.
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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen signed off on this. To put this into perspective, Adam points out in his piece, the gross domestic product of every country on the planet was $104 trillion last year. $175 trillion is as much money as our government has spent on everything since the Constitution was written.
in 1787, even adjusted for inflation. When was the last time when was the last time anything was done to keep Social Security going? Well, you have to go back 40, 40 something years ago, where Ronald Reagan and Tip O ‘Neill made some changes. Tom Coburn, again, I was a huge fan of his I wished he was present the late
Tom Coburn, I called him Dr. No, warned 2013 Congress was drunk on spending, talked about unfunded liabilities at the time he was talking about it was $128 trillion. Again, I know, trillion billion people don’t even understand the number and how great it is. Again, it’s up 39 % since 2013. So the Treasury estimates, this is the number.
Treasury estimates that the US will spend $215 .7 trillion in the next 75 years to pay out Social Security and Medicare. Now this comes from your payroll taxes. They’re expected to generate $137 .4 trillion. That’s almost an $80 trillion funding cap. $80 trillion gap. Where is that money going to come from? Well, right now it can come from…
Borrowing more money, but worth $34 trillion in debt. It can come from higher taxes, reduced benefits, which is going to happen, a combination of all of the above. None of these things, nobody really wants to talk about, right? Nobody wants to talk about these things. I’m going to go through some of the unfunded liabilities and how they break out by program. Medicare Part A, that covers hospital visits. 15.
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trillion dollar. Okay, Medicare Part B. $99 trillion unfunded Medicare Part D 22 trillion social security needs another $68 trillion. Again, we don’t have the leadership today. For quite we have we have we have millions of people coming across our border. And no one’s doing a damn
thing about it. You think they’re going to be able to tackle this? The last time they tried last time they tried it was, you know, the Democrats using, you know, pushing Paul Ryan off, having Paul Ryan push an elderly person off the cliff in a wheelchair. And the irony of it is basically that’s that’s the same tactic Donald Trump is taking right now in regards to that when he was the primary season he was accusing, in essence,
his challengers of doing the same thing.
Um, I see a guy I talk about ignoring the volcano. Again, I’m going to spend some time this weekend on the radio show talking about this and talking about being prepared. Probably one of the greatest mottos of all time. It’s a Boy Scout motto be prepared. I’ve known this since the 1990s. I warned you about it since the 1990s. I’m prepared. So again, if they
They cut and I don’t get any social security whatsoever. I’ll be fine. I’m gonna deal with that. Will you? Are you gonna be ready for that? It’s a reality.
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Oh no, that could never happen. Okay.
Okay, again, look at history. Throughout history, how many times people have deluded themselves into thinking, oh no, that couldn’t happen. That’s why I talk about ignoring the volcano.
You want to ignore it? Okay. Okay. But as it stands right now, we don’t have we do not have we don’t have the intelligence in Washington DC, nor do we have the leadership that is willing to tackle this problem. So I’m here to tell you, don’t plan on getting it. Don’t plan on getting it. The last time they tried to reform it again, and I got to
credit George W. Bush for trying to do it in 2004 when he got reelected. Unfortunately, he was too busy spending all of his political capital in Iraq. Boy, that was worthwhile, right? Oh, it was a worthwhile adventure. That was worth our trillions of dollars there as well, right? Let me think about this for a second. All the money we’ve spent just over the past couple decades and then some.
on all of our military adventures around the globe. Imagine if we had just taken that money and stuck it into an S &P 500 index fund. Or I could do a diversified portfolio. Imagine where we’d be. Yeah, it’s funny. Our economy and our companies are the greatest the world has ever seen, ever known. Isn’t it funny that…
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countries from all over the globe have sovereign wealth funds where they invest in American companies. We don’t even do it here as a nation. We don’t do it for our citizens here. Five of the people, you know, talk about all the great, you know, retirement programs from this country and that country in Scandinavia, you know, that they invest, they invest their money in American companies. You know that, right? Now we’re just, we’re just too dumb to figure it out.
Oh no, we get morons out there. Wall Street fat cats can steal the money. What if the stock market goes down? You’re a moron. Okay, well, what is your solution? Oh, let’s take the social security surpluses that we have. What they do? Put it in a can and bury it in the backyard? You’re a bad steward. These people you continue to vote for are bad stewards of your money. Anyway, Watchdog on wallstreet .com.
