Social Security Trends

More:

https://www.actuary.org/socialsecurity

The Social Security Challenge

Social Security’s trust fund reserves were projected in the 2022 Social Security Trustees Report to become depleted in the future, potentially leading to a forced 20 percent cut in payable benefits in the 2030s unless legislative changes are adopted to prevent it. Assuring that Social Security stays strong means that Congress would need to evaluate very different reform options with complex and wide-ranging impacts–options such as making higher levels of income subject to the portion of payroll taxes dedicated to Social Security or raising Social Security’s normal retirement age–and then pass the reforms it chooses so that they can become law. How would you address the solvency issue? In the Academy’s Social Security Challenge, develop your proposed reform approach by traveling through a virtual town where you’ll learn residents’ different views on reform ideas and information about their impacts, and puzzle through choices. In the Challenge finale, select and submit your approach from a palette of possible reform options and see how well it works to address the solvency issue.

I suppose for the average american, watching a bunch of short videos is educational. For me I found it a little annoying to jump through a few hoops to find the actual SS game.

Still wish there was some political will in DC to deal with this.

1 Like

I want my 2k/month dammit

Is there a way to skip the video to get to the game?

I still can’t figure out how to get to the game. I let the video run with the sound off and now it’s giving me choices like “Post Office”, and “Park”.

Is there not a game with choices like “increase taxes” and “lower benefits”?

When the video starts, you can click the scroll bar at the bottom to get to the end. Then you have to pass through a few slides until you get to a map of a small town.

Clicking on most of the locations in the town brings up another set of slides. You need to click on the Treasury looking building in the middle to find the actual game

1 Like

How obnoxious. It’s good that they updated the game though.

I am curious to see how much savings there is from eliminating the $255 death benefit.

I would also like the option for chained CPI using the CPI Elderly rate of CPI. You could pick one or the other but not both.

That said, I’m not certain that BLS calculates a chained CPI-E. But if they don’t it should be theoretically possible to do so.

More legal immigrants and fewer abortions would improve the projections of future Social Security and Medicare deficiencies. Neither seems likely. Most Americans don’t connect them, and too few see the deficiencies as a “current” problem.