A majority of millennials think that the Social Security program is making more payments than it receives taxes, according to an exclusive Newsweek poll.

Millennials, Gen X and Gen Z say the system needs reform, an exclusive Newsweek poll found, amid fears the benefits won’t exist when they come to retire

Younger generations in the U.S., including millennials and Gen Zers, are much more likely to believe that the Social Security system needs reforming than those in their 60s and 70s, according to a recent survey conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies on behalf of Newsweek.

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Some 40 percent of respondents said they believe that the Social Security program currently pays out more to retirees than it is receiving in Social Security tax payments, while 26 percent disagreed with this statement.

Gen Zers (ages 18-26), millennials (ages 27-42) and Gen Xers (ages 43-58) were more likely than boomers (59 and older) to think that Social Security should be reformed.

  • shastaxc@lemm.ee
    143·
    11 months ago

    If you change nothing else you will still run out of money in the fund if the population ever starts to stagmate or decline again. It is basically a pyramid scheme. Importing more people is only a short term fix.

      • shastaxc@lemm.ee
        1·
        11 months ago

        You’re right, but for this to work you have to increase immigration numbers year after year to keep up.

    • Custoslibera@lemmy.world
      3·
      11 months ago

      Run out of money?

      You can just make more money, seriously.

      All countries can just go into a bigger and bigger debt. It doesn’t matter, money is made up.

      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
        31·
        11 months ago

        Money isn’t “made up”. It’s valuable because a government will only accept it to pay taxes. You can’t pay taxes with anything else. Businesses keep local currency and accept payment in it (but not foreign currency) for this reason.

        There’s no reason to run up debt when corporate or income taxes can be raised. The US has some of the lowest taxes in the developed world. Increasing them is only a political problem, not a financial one. This may become more obvious when the Social Security trust fund gets lower in a few decades.

        • dezmd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          11 months ago

          Money is made up, Government is made up, Religion is made up, its all made up, lets not get lost in our own hubris of humanity on this.

          We as human beings happen to have the intellectual evolution to make up all of these variously complex systems of organization. The scientific method itself is such an improvement on our made up bullshit because it created a system to test the viability of the ideas for systems we make up. Your perspective mandates all suspension of disbelief to accept it at face value without any room for nuance.

          At the end of the day, a phrase itself which is just the made up concept to describe the period of our planets revolution in which light from our star is no longer visible from our line of sight perspective, stacking economics and government spending on top of imaginary debt has an instinctual feeling of wrongness even before trying to systemize that feeling into our made up definitions of ethical/morality/legal systems.

          Welcome to humanity, where everything is made up and the points dont matter unless you perceive them in a way that matters. I swear I’m not high right now.

        • Custoslibera@lemmy.world
          1·
          11 months ago

          No doubt you can increase taxes, sure.

          You can just print more money though and give it out as social security.