Nearly All Families Helped By Social Security
Today, with millions of people losing their jobs every month, retirement travel is only a dream. With our financial systems going into the sewer, and the home crisis blowing up around us – these safety nets are becoming more crucial than ever before. A lot of retired women, especially, are just barely able to make ends meet even with the help of Social Security. Primarily, this is because women today are less likely than men to have additional sources of income. Partly due to working less years in the workforce because of child raising responsibilities. And partly because, even while in the work force, women typically are paid less than men. Luckily, this situation seems to be gradually changing,
But even families that don’t necessarily need Social Security to survive are helped by it. In fact, according to independent studies, if the government were suddenly to get rid of Social Security, many retired families would experience a drop in their living standards of 70% or more.
Many people fear that the system cannot sustain itself. In fact, there have been times in the past when the amount of money paid to recipients exceeded the amount of money collected via FICA. In these cases, Trust bonds were sold to make up the shortfall. Because of circumstances like these, Congress has occasionally upped the percentage of gross income that FICA can collect from salaries. Even these modifications, however, as the population ages and simultaneously live longer, may not be enough to sustain the system without drastic changes to the system.
The Social Security program is the most vast government program in the country – comprising over one fifth of the federal budget. As some politicians look at cutting the size and expenses of government, this program has an inviting target on its back. To many people, however, the cost of losing this critical system could ultimately be a great deal more than the cost of running budget deficits.
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 7:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.