Social Security Trust Fund

How that's done, boy, I wouldn't want to be in that room.

So Social Security now and from its inception funded from payroll taxes and the Social Security Trust Fund.

When you said that Social Security is going to run out of money, that's what you're referring to.

Social Security Trust Fund is going to run out of money.

Too many senior citizens, not enough workers paying payroll taxes.

Got it.

And I think that there is a possible opening for a new Ross Perot candidate that if the two political parties continue to ignore it, for an independent to say, we can't ignore this any longer.

There is a exogenous factor that may stimulate political action, which is that the Social Security Trust Fund will no longer be able to pay full benefits as of 2032.

So that sort of provides some kind that the next president will have to deal with that.

So it provides some kind of political nudge that we really need to get serious about the state of our finances.

We have an email now from David B. in Cleveland Heights.

David writes, knowing that immigrants have long been a boost to local and national economies, I'm also concerned about the effects of limiting citizenship too much and deporting so many who want to be here lawfully on the problems with the Social Security Trust Fund.

There will be a lot fewer workers putting into this trust fund.

This is in addition to just the recognition that the U.S. should be a welcoming place to people yearning to breathe free.

And so while they're in those rooms, Wall Street is quietly working to put the private assets funding this AI boom into ordinary people's retirement accounts, right? Your 401k, your neighbor's 401k.

But at the exact same time, the Social Security Trust Fund is projected to run dry by 2032, right? So that's also not good.

So you got to ask yourself, the only question that really matters here is who gets stuck with the upside of this and who gets stuck with the bill.

You can't vote this away.

So I guess that's the good news.

But, you know, if we don't get our arms around entitlement spending, I think around 2030 or 31, the Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money.

And that is within the term of all the senators who are being elected this year.

So it's going to hit us whether we like it or not.

For what it's worth, I think we've been incorrectly resourcing national security for a very long period of time.

The trouble is, We're now trying to turn the taps on at a time when the Social Security Trust Fund is running out, and we have more than $40 trillion in debt with a Treasury secretary, unfortunately, that has been making some decisions that have only made borrowing more expensive, ultimately.

What's your sense on how the budgetary element of this works out? Because the chief in our interview with him that aired on Monday made it abundantly clear, and he told reporters the same exact thing, We have an enormous amount of work to do to reset the force after it comes out of the desert.

And Dave, I'm going to come to you in a second on that.

So I do think, though, in 2028, there will be.

And why? Because if you look right around the corner, 2031, the Social Security Trust Fund has, which is sort of the kind of the auditor or the accounting sort of side of the Social Security Trust Fund, which manages benefits, has estimated that Social Security will have to cut, reduce benefits by 20%.

It basically, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system because there are fewer people paying into it.

They're going to actually have to kind of you know, again, cut benefits.

So there is sort of a supply and demand dynamic.

The market is basically requiring that they get more compensation.

But I do think that like this sort of Social Security trust fund deadline could be the forcing mechanism if the market is not.

And again, the market doesn't seem like it is necessarily at this point.