Congress Once Again Meddling with Citizen Retirement
- Author: Kelly Cooke
- Posted: 2024-10-11
If you're unfamiliar with the Secure Act 2.0, it's a Congressional change to Social Security for seniors that politicians claim is beneficial. However, all it really does is keep seniors working into their 70s, with the option to privately invest.
In other words, it's a way for the American federal government to keep millions of people out of the program, while they spend the bulk of Social Security on illegal immigrants and other demographics.
The only good thing that the Secure Act provides is a small tax credit for small businesses, which helps them to hire more employees.
Though, again, this just keeps people off of Social Security and in the workforce, so it's no win for seniors at all.
According to Congressional reports, the House is going to once again make changes to Social Security through the Secure act. Now that a Democrat-majority House is a lame duck, they're looking to push through all sorts of changes.
One of the biggest changes proposed is potentially increasing the retirement age again.
Politicians say this is a good thing, as it allows for minimum deposits and for workers to fund their own retirement privately through investments. Congress is looking to up the age to 72, seven years past the 65 year mark that was standard many years ago.
In other words, politicians want to ensure that American people work for longer portions of their lives before retiring.
The positive media spin is incredible, with many reports saying that these proposed changes are going to really help out senior citizens.
owever, few believe this to be the case. What is it about an outgoing Democrat majority that makes anyone think Lucy would actually hold the football for Charlie Brown this time around? It's been yanked out every other time, and this time will likely be no different.
Some of the changes sound good on their face, like giving workers access to emergency funds, or improved tax credits.
However, seniors have heard all of this before, and Social Security just continues to get worse.
It's not a Republican or Democrat issue either; SSI has been stagnated under both parties, and both parties agree with keeping Americans in the workforce for longer portions of their lives.
Americans Must Fend For Themselves
The idea of Social Security, broadly speaking, was that society would take care of its elderly people once they were unable to work any longer. Of course, the system has exploded since that point and now claims to do much more, but that was the basic gist of it. The idea of a social safety net was included, but the general reason for Social Security was to provide seniors with ample retirement benefits. However, seniors are pretty much left stranded today. There is an automatic increase in Social Security Income (SSI) for seniors, but it's not much. It's a few percentage points that adjust for inflation, and the administration in the White House takes credit for actually providing seniors with more money.
Those seniors aren't provided with more money, and everyone knows this is true. They stay stuck in place, stagnated, because any small increases to their SSI are just chewed up by rates of inflation and they're just unable to move forward. This is why so many elderly people still have to work. They're Walmart greeters and crossing guards and janitors, and some of them are working until they die. They never get to retire. They never get to just enjoy life and their grandchildren. They started working from a young age, and the entirety of their lives has been working every day in order to keep a roof over their heads. This is no kind of life for anyone. Millions of seniors deal with depression and multiple health issues that are brought on by their unrelenting work schedules.
It's sad to admit, but the United States' federal government has completely failed senior citizens. People who worked all their life and paid into the tax pool on the promise of being cared for are now given the bare minimum and are ignored otherwise. If you're looking for a way to save for your retirement, then it's far better to go the private route. Find some different sorts of investments, IRAs and precious metals; or maybe you can buy into a crypto fund for cheap. You should be looking to fend for yourself. The simple fact is that the government is going to destroy Social Security before it's all said and done.
