From the Social Security Trustees Report:
... The changes in policy for the Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals program discussed in III.B, which affect the Social Security program in the first ten years primarily by increasing payroll tax income, increased the tenth year OASI trust fund ratio by 1 percentage point. Changes in demographic assumptions over the short-range period, primarily increased mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic, increased the projected tenth year trust fund ratio for OASI by 6 percentage points. .In case you're having trouble following the verbiage, this says that DACA is helping the Trust Funds modestly because DACA members will be paying taxes, as is, sadly, Covid-19 because of the excess deaths. Contrary to right wing fairy tales, immigration is always good for the Trust Funds. On the whole, immigrants pay taxes for many years before they draw Social Security benefits. What's hard to understand about that? The Trust funds are projected to be depleted a bit earlier despite the effects of DACA and Covid-19 because of "several changes in economic data and assumptions."
More specifically as to mortality, the report says that:
... Preliminary data for 2020 show that while the effects of the pandemic led to significantly higher death rates for those aged 15 and older, the death rates for those under age 15 were significantly lower, though not quite to the same degree. Thus, for ages 15 and over, death rates are assumed to increase above what would have been projected in the absence of the pandemic by 16.4 percent for 2020, 15 percent for 2021, 4 percent for 2022, and 1 percent for 2023. ...
As best I can tell the Trustees make no assumption about long Covid disability claims. I don't know how they could. It's all speculative at this point.
5 comments:
Immigration is a mixed bag because the newly arrived do pay ss taxes but on back end, when it comes to receiving benefits for retirement, because they are generally (not always) low wage earners they help drain the system along with other low wage earners.
Low Wage Earners (i.e. poor people) drain the system (the social saftey net put in place to protect the poor). How dare they!
Some president and Congress in the next 10 years will have to bite the bullet to make a change to Social Security.
I believe raising the cap on what can be taxed. Currently, it is around $137K. This is woefully low giving the rich another tax break.
Biden already took the bullet to leave Afghanistan. Maybe he will have to bite another one.
Raise the tax rate. SSA benefits are weighted heavily to help lower income workers. Everyone should pay at this point.
May save a few bucks by ending DRCs for widows who switch after FRA.
Raising the cap isnt enough. It would be another band aid on a sucking chest wound. The only thing that is going to fix it is the exact same thing that has been needed to fix it for the last 30 years. But oddly that group managed to kick the can down the road long enough to avoid it.
There has to be an increase in the tax. I dont like it, not at all, but that is the only thing that will fix it.
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