Tag Archives: Social Security

News

Under Obama’s socialist policies, youth “Misery Index” reaches record high

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Young people usually only get one side of every issue - because we don't tell them the other side
Young people usually only get one side of every issue – because we don’t tell them the other side

Obama added $10 trillion to the national debt in his 8 years, doubling it from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. That will be placed on the backs of the next generation of younger Americans. But it turns out that they have many other problems as well.

This is from the College Fix.

Excerpt:

In the last two presidential elections, young voters served as a key demographic that helped catapult Barack Obama to the White House. What has he done for millennials in return? According to a new analysis, made them more miserable than ever.

Young America’s Foundation on Wednesday released its annual Youth Misery Index, calculated by adding youth unemployment, student loan debt, and national debt (per capita) numbers.

Today the youth unemployment rate exceeds 16 percent, and the average student in the class of 2015 graduated with a record $35,000 in student loan debt; national debt per capita, “a remarkable burden that will fall squarely on the shoulders of millennials,” is just under $59,000, the foundation reports.

With that, the index has spiked to a record high of 109.9 this year, up from 106.5 last January, and 83.5 in 2009 when President Obama took office, the foundation reports.

What about entitlement programs?

Business Daily reports on a Social Security problem:

The Social Security Trust Fund just suffered its first annual decline since Congress shored up the retirement program in 1983.

The unexpected $3 billion decline is an indication of the precarious state of Social Security’s finances. Since 2010, the program has been paying out more in benefits than it gets in tax revenue, but the trust fund, which earns about $95 billion a year in interest, had kept growing, though a little less each year.

[…]Under current policies, the CBO says the trust fund will be gone by 2029.

If nothing were done before that point, it would take an across-the-board 29% benefit cut — including on the oldest retirees and the disabled — to bring program costs in line with revenues.

Since we aborted the next generation of workers, we can’t afford to keep paying out benefits at the current rate. There are more people retiring than entering the work force. I hope they start to invest early, but what I am seeing is that they want to take out loans and travel the world for fun and thrills.

Obama doubled the national debt in 8 years
Obama doubled the national debt in 8 years

Anyway, on to the next problem, trillion dollar deficits. They’re back!

Investors Business Daily explains:

The federal budget deficit is back on the rise — by an expected $105 billion this year — the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, the first increase since fiscal 2009. Deficits topping $1 trillion will be back before you know it — three years sooner than expected.

[…]The CBO said the rise was primarily due to the year-end budget deal that extended, and in some cases expanded, corporate and individual tax cuts, as well as busting spending caps. The deficit-to-GDP ratio is expected to grow to 2.9% in fiscal 2016 from 2.5% last year. That would also be the first increase since 2009, with the trend getting worse in the years ahead.

From 2016 to 2025, the CBO expects cumulative deficits of $8.5 trillion — $1.5 trillion more than it predicted in August.

This is the budget deal that establishment Republicans like Paul Ryan supported. Rubio didn’t show up to vote against the Ryan deal. I assume that Rubio was OK with the spending bill passing, and these trillion dollar deficits returning. Cruz showed up to vote against the deal, of course.

And finally, the last problem – Obamacare is making health care more expensive than ever for the middle class.

Investors Business Daily again:

People making just $36,000 a year can easily end up spending 22% of it on health costs, even if they are enrolled in a subsidized ObamaCare insurance plan, according to a report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute.

[…]Individuals earning between 300% and 400% of the poverty level — which works out to roughly between $35,000 and $47,000 — will pay close to a median of 10% of their income on insurance premiums. (This group is eligible for ObamaCare insurance subsidies but at far lower levels than poorer people.)

And because ObamaCare plans typically come with high deductibles and copays, they’ll spend another 5% on out-of-pocket costs. For a worker making $36,000, the combined costs add up to $5,220.

The report found, however, that these costs could easily double. One in 10 people in this income group will end up devoting 22% of their incomes to insurance and out-of-pocket costs.

Even those in the lowest income group could get hit with big bills. One in 10 of those who make less than 200% of the poverty level will face health costs that eat up 18.5% of their income.

Obama likes to paint a rosy picture of the economy in his state of the union, but the real truth is not so rosy. Young people shouldn’t have voted for him, they are not going to live as prosperously as their elders did under Reagan and George W. Bush.

News

New study: record high 30.3 percent of millenials live with a parent

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Those on the left assure us that the secret to creating more jobs is making it easier for more people to go to college. We have to keep taxing job creators and workers, they say, so that we can pay for more people to get a college indoctrination. I mean education! Well, we have been trying that approach for some time – tax the private sector, make it cheaper for people to go to college. And the result is that we now have a record high number of young adults with college degrees, and a record high number of young adults living in poverty and a record high number of young adults living at home.

The article from Campus Reform tells us where we are now.

They write:

An all-time high of 30.3 percent of millennials are living with a parent, according to data released from the U.S. Census Bureau’s study, “Young Adults: Then and Now.”

The study, released Dec., 4, 2014, and tracks the young adult population from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses and the 2009-2013 American Community Survey, gathering data about salary, education level, transportation habits, and more than 40 other topics.

Millennials are living at home, and more are living in poverty with lower rates of employment than their predecessors.

According to the report, millennials are more likely to live at home than any other generation of young adults. In 1980, 22.9 percent of young adults lived with a parent, while in 1990 the percentage increased to 24.2 percent. In 2000, the percentage decreased to 23.2 percent, but by 2013 it hit a record-level by jumping more than 7 percentage points.

Millennials are living at home, and more are living in poverty with lower rates of employment than their predecessors. According to the study, one in five young adults live in poverty, up from one in seven in 1980. Currently, the study claims 65 percent of millennials are employed compared to the 1980 number of 69 percent.

Yet, 22 percent of young adults have a college degree, compared to only 16 percent in 1980.

The troubling thing about this for me is how much millenials keep voting, again and again, for higher taxes and more regulations. On the one hand, they want to vote against evil corporations. Tax them more! Regulate them, to save the planet! Then, a split-second later, they go and ask these corporations that they’ve been taught to bash for work. There is work for them, all right – in other countries with lower taxes and less regulation.

Anyway, we want to be positive, so again, I’m going to provide people with useful information.

First, study STEM programs:

  1. Petroleum Engineering – Starting Salary: $103,000 / Mid-Career Salary: $160,000
  2. Actuarial Mathematics – Starting Salary: $58,700 / Mid-Career Salary: $120,000
  3. Nuclear Engineering – Starting Salary: $67,600 / Mid-Career Salary: $117,000
  4. Chemical Engineering – Starting Salary: $68,200 / Mid-Career Salary: $115,000
  5. Aerospace Engineering – Starting Salary: $62,800 / Mid-Career Salary: $109,000
  6. Electrical Engineering – Starting Salary: $64,300 / Mid-Career Salary: $106,000
  7. Computer Engineering – Starting Salary: $65,300 / Mid-Career Salary: $106,000
  8. Computer Science – Starting Salary: $59,800 / Mid-Career Salary: $102,000
  9. Physics – Starting Salary: $53,100 / Mid-Career Salary: $101,000
  10. Mechanical Engineering – Starting Salary: $60,900 / Mid-Career Salary: $99,700

And you should also start investing early, and keep investing:

The good news is there are now more millionaires than ever. But when it comes to retirement, is a million dollars enough?

“If they want to be financially independent, retire at 65 and be able to have an income of $40,000 a year in retirement for 30 years, then it’s likely that they’re going to need a million dollars to retire to generate that lifestyle,” said Bruce Allen, an independent wealth advisor.

Living comfortably on $40,000 a year in retirement, which would require a $1 million nest egg by the time you reach the retirement age, will depend on your expenses, investment returns and health-care costs.

[…]Many retirees make it work with less. According to Census data, the median household income for those 65 and older is $34,000, but that’s almost half the $66,000 for ages 55 to 64. In order to preserve that preretirement standard of living, financial experts say you’ll need more than a million dollars.

And the last piece of advice I would be this – if you are a young person, you should be looking into understanding how to save and invest, and you should be reading unbiased financial news. It’s not enough to hope that the government is going to bail you out. In all likelihood, the government will be coming to you in 15 years, looking for you to bail them out of their obligations to pay the pensions and health care costs of retirees. You should not take pride in being ignorant of economics and politics. This is your problem. Wishing and hoping that things will be OK will not make these challenges go away. Just because your friends, your favorite musicians, your favorite authors, your co-workers, etc. are not talking about these issues to you, it does not mean that these challenges don’t apply to you. They do apply to you. And just getting good grades now is NOT a guarantee that you will be OK later. You’re going to be expected to do more with less in a way that your parents never had to do. They are leaving you a worse financial world than they received.

News

Will the Social Security and Medicare programs be there for young Americans?

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Of course not, and the voting in Democrats that they seem to like to do is making it worse.

Here’s an article from the Daily Signal to tell about it.

Chart first:

Social Security insolvent in 2024
Social Security insolvent in 2024

And now the story:

Social Security’s trustees projected in 1983 that the recently enacted Social Security reforms would keep the program active for at least the next 75 years, through 2058. However, according to research by Rachel Greszler, a senior policy analyst, and James M. Roberts, research fellow for economic freedom and growth at The Heritage Foundation, that approach date has accelerated.

“If the trend since 1983 continues, the program will become insolvent in 2024—34 years earlier than originally projected,” Roberts writes.

Now you might think that the way Democrats appeal to younger voters, that they are taking care of this problem for them.

Well, here’s an article from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

The White House recently conceded that President Obama’s executive order effectively legalizing an estimated 5 million undocumented immigrants means that newly legalized workers will contribute to Social Security and Medicare and be eligible for benefits.

Does the president have any idea how much money his action could cost the country — i.e., taxpayers?

[…]The Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund trustees estimate the two program’s combined long-term unfunded liabilities — the estimated amount the government will have to pay in benefits above what it expects to receive — at about $49 trillion. Obama’s amnesty action greatly exacerbates the problem, because retirees get back far more than they pay in.

[…]Because the U.S. pays hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement benefits, on average, for each new retiree, whether part of Obama’s amnesty program or not, the president has just vastly worsened the long-term financial condition of the country’s two primary retirement safety nets.

But Obama’s newly legalized workers will impose even heavier losses than Steuerle’s examples.

Most workers pay into the programs for their working careers, between 40 and 50 years. But millions of Obama’s newly legalized are working-age adults with children, so many could be in their 40s or older.

Thus they could pay FICA taxes for the next, say, 15 or 20 years — less than half the average American worker — and be eligible for the full array of Social Security and Medicare benefits.

In addition, most will be lower-income workers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that foreign-born, full-time workers earn about 80% of native-born Americans ($33,500 vs. $41,900).

Social Security is a social insurance program and is structured to provide disproportionately more benefits for lower-income workers. Medicare pays the same regardless of how much a worker pays in.

To be sure, these new workers’ entry will likely help the trust funds initially, because most will be paying in rather than taking out.

Under current rules, workers must pay FICA taxes for 40 quarters (10 years total) before being fully eligible for the programs. But within a few decades the oldest will start retiring.

Given the demographic unknowns, estimating the amnesty’s financial cost to our retirement programs — and so to U.S. taxpayers — can only be approximate.

But using a basic simulation model, we believe the government will receive about $500 billion in payroll tax revenue (including Part B and drug premiums), and expect it to pay out some $2 trillion in benefits over several decades.

Yeah, so they are actually making it worse. But hey, at least we have redefined marriage, right?

As if that were not enough, there’s this lovely story from CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Daily Treasury Statement that was released Wednesday afternoon as Americans were preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving revealed that the U.S. Treasury has been forced to issue $1,040,965,000,000 in new debt since fiscal 2015 started just eight weeks ago in order to raise the money to pay off Treasury securities that were maturing and to cover new deficit spending by the government.

The only way the Treasury could handle the $942,103,000,000 in old debt that matured during the period plus finance the new deficit spending the government engaged in was to roll over the old debt into new debt and issue enough additional new debt to cover the new deficit spending.

This mode of financing the federal government resembles what the Securities and Exchange Commission calls a Ponzi scheme. “A Ponzi scheme,” says the Securities and Exchange Commission, “is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors,” says the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“With little or no legitimate earnings, the schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to continue,” explains the SEC. “Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it becomes difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors ask to cash out.”

Now you might ask yourself – are young people aware of these things? Of course not. What they learn in university is how to escape their repressive religious backgrounds by experimenting with risky, irresponsible sexual behavior. They are not aware of the situation, and when they vote, they vote like they were picking candidates on American Idol. I guess I can understand why young people act stupidly. They are concerned with what the culture tells them to be concerned about, and that’s legal baby-killing, redefining marriage to separate kids from their mom or dad, police shooting people who commit crimes, a nonexistent gender pay gap and global warming. What is appalling to me is when their parents vote Democrat… which is basically voting to have a higher standard of living for themselves, then passing the bill onto to their kids. It’s especially amazing when married women do this to their own kids. What are they thinking?