Social Security 2023: A Quick Refresher on the Changing Landscape - GoBankingRates
We’re two days away from a new calendar year and, as happens every year, the flipping of the calendar brings with it a slate of new parameters governing Social Security and affecting those receiving benefits. The GoBankingRates editorial staff has assembled a handy itemization of the most significant changes, from the extraordinary cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to the new earnings limits (i.e., the wage cap for application of payroll taxes and the earnings limits for beneficiaries under their full retirement age). For a quick update on what limits are changing, check out their post here…
While the GoBankingRates post notes that the 8.7% COLA is historically high–in fact, the highest in 41 years–it deserves mentioning that this uncommonly large benefit increase may play a hand in another part of Social Security’s changing landscape soon (hopefully beginning in 2023). The point here is that the historically high COLA is expected, by many financial pundits, to draw the full depletion date for Social Security’s combined trust funds a year closer. In fact, some official sources have pegged the depletion date as a mere decade away.
With respect to the Social Security landscape this year, it appears possible that the proximity of full reserve depletion may finally catch the attention of Congress, since a decade really isn’t that long and since time really is running out on the ability to effect changes in a somewhat orderly fashion. Stay tuned to this website for updates on legislative activity related to resolution of Social Security’s solvency problem!
How is The Combined Social Security Guarantee and Social Security Plus Initiative fair to people who paid more into the system during their career and then waited until age 70 to receive benefits? Answer…it isn’t!! It reduces the benefits for this group of retirees in order to enhance the benefits to other retirees who paid in less and began taking benefits early. Totally unfair!!! The is just socialism.
Tim:
Thank you for the comment. The setback in full retirement age included in the Social Security Guarantee is based on the estimated longevity of today’s beneficiary. When the Social Security program was originally developed in the 1930s, life expectancy was in the mid-60s. Now, it’s in the late-70s to low-80s, meaning that today’s beneficiaries will draw benefits longer than the program was designed to accommodate. Inclusion of this provision in the AMAC plan simply recognizes that Social Security needs to be modernized in order to avoid the insolvency problem now only about a decade away.
Gerry Hafer
AMAC Foundation
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The opinions and interpretations expressed in this message are the viewpoints of the message’s author, a trained advisor accredited under the National Social Security Advisors program of the National Social Security Association, LLC (NSSA). The author, the NSSA, and the AMAC Foundation are not affiliated with or endorsed by the United States Government, the Social Security Administration, or any other state government.