Will baby boomers be the last generation to get Social Security & Medicare? [View all]

[CousinIT]

It seems likely they will either be the last generation to have these benefits (even if they paid into them) or they will be the last generation to get full benefits before reduction and privatization. I don't see them fighting for Social Security & Medicare. And when you take for granted the most successful anti-poverty program in America, you lose it. Same with reproductive rights, voting rights, our Democratic Republic, and so on.

A shorter Social Security timeline spells serious trouble for millennials and Gen Z
https://couriernewsroom.com/news/a-shorter-social-security-timeline-spells-serious-trouble-for-millennials-and-gen-z/

The American public received some bleak news last week: The trust funds that Social Security uses to ensure recipients get their full benefits are projected to run out of money by 2034, one year earlier than the Social Security Board of Trustees estimated in their report last year. If federal lawmakers take no action, beneficiaries would receive 81 cents for every dollar that they currently receive once the trust funds are depleted.

Even before the trustees’ 2025 annual report was released, younger Americans were already growing more skeptical that Social Security—a New Deal-era, pay-as-you-go system that uses current workers’ payroll taxes—will be there for them when they retire.

“The people that stand to lose the most are younger workers who paid in, not just for 10 years, sometimes for 20 years or more, depending on how you want to label young, who will see none of their money come back to them,” Martin O’Malley, former Social Security Commissioner during the Biden administration, told me in an interview. “It’s people who worked on the promise that our generation would make them part of this risk pool [and] ensure them against the same poverty that our parents were insured against by their parents.”

O’Malley now chairs Win Back Our Country, a new PAC focused on countering misinformation about Social Security and pushing back against efforts to privatize the program. He argued that one of the most straightforward ways to strengthen the program is simply to require the ultra-wealthy to pay their fair share.

“Most Americans believe it is a grave injustice that a family of four who earns $170,000 and pays, therefore, $10,000 into Social Security is paying the same amount that a man who makes $170 million pays into Social Security—namely, that same $10,000,” he added. “Why? Because no dollars earned above $170,000 have anything taken out and put into Social Security.” (Payroll taxes are only applied to earnings up to the Social Security wage cap of $168,600 for 2025.)