The 2023 Social Security Trustees Report was released yesterday, and just like I did last year (and the year before, and the year before that, etc), let’s look at the fiscal status of the retirement program.
There is a lot of data in the Report. But the most important set of numbers can be found in Table VI.G9.
As you can see from this chart, these numbers show the amount of revenue coming into the program each year, adjusted for inflation, as well as the amount of yearly spending. Both are rising rapidly.
Since the orange line (spending) is climbing faster than the blue line (revenue), the obvious takeaway is that Social Security has a deficit.
But that would be an understatement.
As you can see from the second chart, the cumulative deficit over the next 77 years is more than $60 trillion.
You’ll notice, of course, that I added a bit of editorializing to both charts.
That’s because it is reprehensible that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are opposed to reforms that would modernize the program.
They won’t admit it, but their approach necessarily and unavoidably means huge tax increases on lower-income and middle-class households.
P.S. If you are not Biden or Trump and want to do what’s best for America, I suggest learning about reforms in Australia, Chile, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Netherlands, the Faroe Islands, Denmark, Israel, and Sweden.
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Image credit: 401kcalculator.org | CC BY-SA 2.0.
