What the data says about Social Security, from Pew Research

[CousinIT]

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/05/20/what-the-data-says-about-social-security/

Short, easily understood read. Bookmark this one.

. . .THERE IS MUCH MORE PRIOR TO THESE PARAGRAPHS, the entire thing is worth a read, so visit the link to get the rest.

What happens after the retirement trust fund is depleted?
That depends. With no more trust fund resources to draw on – and absent any legislative changes – Social Security would still collect enough tax revenues to pay about 79% of full retirement benefits, under the trustees’ most likely scenario.

Changing the program’s rules could restore its solvency and allow it to pay all of its promised benefits. Those changes could include raising tax rates, subjecting more earnings to the payroll tax, raising the retirement age, reducing benefit levels, or altering how annual cost-of-living raises are calculated.

How do Americans feel about cutting Social Security benefits?
Most don’t like it. In a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, about eight-in-ten U.S. adults opposed the idea. That included 38% who said the program should be kept about as it is and 40% who said it should cover more people with greater benefits.

Upper-income people were most likely to say future benefit reductions need to be considered. Still, only 27% of upper-income Americans said this.

[Midnight Writer]

1. What the people want no longer matters. It is what a couple hundred people want that wins the day.

We are an oligarchy.

[Iamscrewed]

3. Exactly correct

Ignorant repugnuts and rich assholes fighting to not pay there share of what it takes to keep the masses from bringing out the guillotines.

[Blue Full Moon]

2. Social Security has a 2.7 trillion dollar surplus

It's held in US treasury bonds. The billionaires want to get their paws on our money.

[CousinIT]

4. You bet. They want to dump it into some billionaires' pockets. Like private equity goon..

.....Frank Bisignano, who is now SSA commissioner and who admitted to not even knowing what the job of SSA Commissioner even was before Trump offered it to him.

[D_Master81]

5. I've never understood

Never have understood why we stop paying into social security at 170,000. If they want to leave the employer match there maybe but why not up that to 500,000 or 1 million? There’s a lot of problems that could be helped by doing this