What not working in America" Retirement

Fade in Gimmie some good lovin' by the Blues Brothers… Actor Dennis Hopper looking dash on a chair in the middle of a road… "You gotta have a Plan."

I once had a plan, now it looks as if the only plan that I have going forward is called the Work-For-Life Plan. Being self employed for most of our lives my husband and I have some decent retirement plans in place, but with the latest economic bumps in that road (Plan Blvd.) our retirement has taken some pretty serious hits. Sure the IRA is alright, fairing at a pittance of interest income. The 401k has fallen to a level that makes one wonder why we put the "pretax" dollars in there in the first place. We got out of the stock market with the Dot Com failure. We already downsized our house when real estate was doing fairly well, but bought a new smaller home only to see some of the cash down payment get eaten up by decreasing property values.

We can look forward to Social Security aka OASDI Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, right? U.S. Social Security is a social insurance program funded through dedicated payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). It was enacted by FDR as a part of the New Deal in 1935. Almost three quarters of a century later the plan is heavily in a deficit.

Quote:
"Social Security is currently the largest social insurance program in the U.S., constituting 37% of government expenditure and 7% of the gross domestic product[6] and is currently estimated to keep roughly 40% of all Americans age 65 or older out of poverty.[7]"

Largely because of the rise of neoliberalism Social Security privatization became a major political issue for 30 years starting with Gerald Ford. Privatization was something that might have changed the course except that when we look at the state of AIG, most likely not.

In 1965 Medicare was added by LBJ and the government, in an effort to balance an already problematic budget decided to allow withdrawal of the funds from the Social Security Trust Fund and be put into the General Fund for additional Congressional spending.

Quote:
"In approximately a decade (2019), payroll tax revenue is projected to be insufficient to cover Social Security benefits and the system will begin to withdraw money from the Social Security Trust Fund. The existence and economic significance of the Social Security Trust Fund is a subject of considerable dispute because its assets are special Treasury bonds; i.e., the money in the trust fund have been loaned back to the federal government to pay for other expenses (hence it is said that the fund consists of nothing but "IOUs")."

Quotes from:
www.wikipedia.org