SECURITY: Fact-check time

A David Barnes recently wrote a piece for The Press on Social Security which is full of distortions and misinformation. One thing he says that is true is that millennials will need 401ks/IRAs and whatnot when they come to retire.

I’m almost 67 and the Social Security Administration tells me the same thing. Barnes says that SS is “on a fast track to bankruptcy.” Not as those words are generally understood. From the current SS trustees report, the SS trust fund is $2.81 trillion and at current rates the trust fund is expected to continue increasing until the year 2020. At that point, SS will start drawing down on the trust fund for monthly payments. This is as Alan Greenspan planned it, knowing that the demographics of Boomer retirement were coming.

If everything stays the same as now, the trust fund will be depleted in 2034. Eighteen years from now is hardly “the fast track” and it’s not bankruptcy. The reason we’re in this fix is that a greater percentage of the national income is being arrogated by an increasingly small percentage of the population. SS taxes are capped at $118K. That seems like a lot but it won’t get you in the 1 percent. When you read that most of the income growth since the end of the great recession went to the 1 percent, none of that growth paid SS taxes. One percenters stop paying SS tax sometime in January, not all year.

To fix this, raise the cap. Read the report at www.socialsecurity.gov/oact/tr/2916/

JEFFREY HARRISON

Worley