Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Bush administration to reduce Social Security benefits by up to one-third in coming years.

Today's Post-Dispatch ran an article from the Washington Post describing the Bush administration's decision to change the formula that determine how much a person receives from Social Security.

This is in addition to the diversion of funds into privatized accounts.

If Social Security is in such bad shape, and senior citizens already don't have enough to get by on, how is this supposed to help?
The change would save trillions of dollars in scheduled expenditures and solve Social Security's long-term deficit, but at a cost. According to the Social Security Administration's chief actuary, a middle-class worker retiring in 2022 would see guaranteed benefits cut by 9.9 percent. By 2042, average monthly benefits for middle- and high-income workers would fall by more than a quarter. A retiree in 2075 would receive 54 percent of the benefit now promised.

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