This will be a short departure from my usual in-depth, thoughtful, peel-back-the-layers-to-find-the-truth post.

This is more of a rant, an editorial, and an expression of WTF, with no small part of me wondering how long we are going to put up with this BS. Forgive me while I vent.

I’ve been flying above the daily news at 30,000 feet- it’s an election year after all and if you get too low you will find yourself drowning in mud. Occasionally I glance down to see if anything of note is really happening. One of the topics that is starting to attract my attention is the state of Social Security.

I work in the financial services industry (long story, not my first choice), and in the past I have generally assured people, come what may, the AARP is never going to let the criminals collectively known as “our government” harm Social Security: Almost a quarter of the population receives Social Security benefits in some fashion, and the AARP is one of the largest lobbying organizations in the cess pool of Washington. No politico wants to go home during election year and explain to his constituency why Social Security benefits have been cut.

At least- in the past. Now I’m not so sure.

Indeed, now there is not only open discussion of cutting benefits, something that was unheard of until recently, but also that the cuts could be deeper than previously predicted. Our government has been kicking the can down the road for years- now they’re about to run out of road.

Earlier projections predicted Social Security would be unable to pay full benefits by late 2032. At that point, experts said benefits would be reduced by as much as 24%, or roughly $500 a month. For context, the average Social Security benefit for 2026 is only $2,071. And part of that is considered taxable income.

This week, however, the Congressional Budget Office issued a new prediction that the cuts would likely be 26%, rising to 40% by the end of the century. A 26% cut would equal an average of $542 a month.

Reserves for the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund (ie., Social Security) are set to run out in the fourth quarter of 2032. The bulk of the money for Social Security is funded through dedicated payroll taxes and taxes on benefits, and any shortfall is covered by its existing trust funds. For the past 16 years, Social Security has paid out more than it has taken in, forcing it to dip into trust fund reserves to cover benefits.

By law, Social Security can’t pay out more in benefits than it receives in revenue, so once the trust fund is gone, cuts will follow.

But think about that for a minute: By law, the Social Security can’t pay out more than it receives. Yet our criminal government, in its ongoing effort to funnel as much public money as possible into private pockets, is running an annual deficit of $1.9 trillion dollars. It has no problem borrowing for pet projects and funding Israeli wars, but it will not help fund American worker’s retirements.

Social Security has become essentially a government managed Ponzi scheme funded by payroll taxes, paid by workers and employers (or, if you are like me and are self-employed, you pay both the employee and the employer amounts). And Social Security’s costs have grown from 10.7% of taxable payroll in 1990 to 13.5% in 2010 and 15% today. And because this is now a Ponzi scheme, make no mistake, your money is not going to you. It is being paid to someone else. These costs are expected to grow to 16.5% of payroll by 2032 and to 21% by the end of the century. Meanwhile, revenues (the money coming into Social Security) are failing to keep up, growing to only 12.7% of payroll in 1990 to 12.9% today, and growing slowly toward 14% of payroll by some point in the 2100s.

So the brain surgeons in Washington are discussing two options: cutting benefits, and raising taxes. The Congressional Budget Office says addressing the problem would require an immediate increase of 3.65% in the combined employee/employer payroll tax rate, bringing it to a total of 16.05%.

There is talk of raising the income cap above $184,500. That is, right now, only income at that level and below is subject to Social Security tax. Everything above that is not. But frankly, that would be the equivalent of pissing in the ocean to raise the water level.

But wait, it gets worse. Here’s a fun fact: the senators running for office in this years midterms are the ones who will be in office in the last quarter of 2032. In other words, the mental midgets running for office today are the ones who will be responsible for fixing the problem.

Now I’m scared.

It’s also where I start to get a little mad. The annual cost of the Social Security program is $1.35 trillion. That is a lot of money. But let’s put that in context. The Gross Domestic Product of the United States is projected to be $24.3 trillion this year. The interest on the national debt is now over $1 trillion annually.

And here’s the kicker that really chaps my hide: US military spending in 2026 is approximately $1.04 trillion, representing 3.4% of GDP and roughly 13.7% of the federal budget. This is the spending we know about. This is also the branch of the government that has never passed an audit. Why aren’t we cutting the Pentagon’s budget, or, at the least, insist on an accurate accounting of the money they do receive before they get anymore? Easier to cut Social Security I guess.

But wait, it gets even worse. Of the over $1 trillion spent annually at the Pentagon, over half of that goes to private contractors– that is, for profit companies. This is a redistribution of wealth from the public to private industry. Lockheed Martin, for example, is regularly the largest recipient of Pentagon contracts, raking in $75 billion in revenue in 2025 — more than 72% of which came from the U.S. government. And your tax money is well spent (cough): Lockheed’s CEOs, for example, have used their $20-plus-million-dollar compensation packages to buy luxury real estate from the D.C. suburbs to the shores of Miami. The average CEO to worker compensation in the defense industry is 150 to 1. And we haven’t even looked at the living conditions for our troops and how nearly a quarter of military families experience “food insecurity.”

And keep in mind, CEOs don’t pay into the Social Security fund on income over $184,500, which is less than pocket change on a $20 million salary. Instead, they and other defense contractors have hired so many lobbyists that defense lobbyists outnumber members of Congress 2-to-1: While the AARP has 29 registered lobbyists, the defense industry has 1,131.

At a time when the average American worker is growing more fearful of his retirement and living conditions in his old age, the tax money that could be used to ease the burden of citizens in their final years is spent in donations to Israel, fighting wars for Israel, providing arms to never ending wars around the globe, and padding the lifestyles of the uber wealthy. In what is surely an unrelated coincidence, the largest shareholders of the top-5 military contractors in the US (Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing Defense, General Dynamics) are BlackRock (Jewish), State Street (Jewish- also owned by BlackRock), and Vanguard.

In short, Social Security doesn’t have to go bankrupt, taxes do not need to be increased, and benefits do not need to be cut. Instead, the criminals in Washington need to stop giving hand-outs to the defense contractors, fighting unnecessary wars, and given donations to or fighting wars for countries that should be taking care of themselves.

It is the current slew of politicians running for office tasked with fixing the problem.

Yeah, I’m not holding my breath either.

Amerika Erwache!

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