ARE YOU READY FOR SOME TRUTH …about Social Security

by Ralph Bristol, Facebook, June 16, 2026 -  “I’ve worked my whole life and paid into Social Security every year. That money had better be there when I retire. I earned it.”

That statement includes multiple misunderstandings of the way Social Security works.  And, it’s just one of the many popular myths about the program FDR created in the 1930s, and whose basic structure has never been allowed to change, despite the changes in the population it was created to serve.

1. The fact that you have worked your whole life and paid into Social Security is only marginally responsible for your entitlement.  You need only work for 10 years, earning no more than $7,650 a year to be as entitled to a retirement benefit as someone who worked and paid payroll taxes their entire life. 

2. Let’s talk about all that money you paid into the system.  The more you paid in, the less you are entitled to get back.  Here’s how the formula works.

• Social Security splits your lifetime average earnings (the top 35 years) into three chunks and pays back a different share of each chunk.

• The first chunk (a few hundred to about $1,300/month) gets paid back at 90 cents on the dollar. The middle chunk (up to about $7,750/month) only gets 32 cents on the dollar. Anything above that gets just 15 cents on the dollar.

• If you were a low earner, basically all your average earnings fall into that first generous 90% chunk, and you get back a big share of what you made. 

• If you were a high earner, most of your earnings spill into the 32% and 15% chunks, so you get back a much smaller share — even though your dollar benefit is bigger in absolute terms.

3. Finally, let’s discuss your account. There is none. NONE, nada, zip, of the money you paid in payroll taxes ever did or will belong to you once you paid it. It’s long gone, as intended from the beginning. It is used to pay “current obligations.” 

The ONLY relation between your payroll taxes and your entitlement is that you did pay, for a minimum of 10 years, on a salary of at least $7,650. 

If you have ever said or thought something similar to the quote with which I started this post, you have been disserved, misled, misinformed, probably by multiple demagoues.  

Or -- and this is a possibility -- you simply don’t want to face the truth, because the truth will one day possibly require you to do with less, and you don’t like that.  

I don’t like it either, but the truth is, no-one has stolen from Social Security, illegal aliens are not to blame (they pay in, but they can’t take out) and the only reason you are entitled to Social Security is because Congress has said so.  And Congress has the right and the obligation to alter that promise whenever necessary.

In the year 2032, just six years from now, the funding mechanism, which has been changed multiple times, to increase payroll taxes and reduce benefits, by increasing the retirement age and taxing some benefits, will have to be changed again – for the first time in nearly 50 years. 

Sure, there has been some fraud.  All massive government programs suffer fraud.  A lot of it is caught and prosecuted, but when the bank is holding trillions, there will be robbers.  Fraud is not the source of Social Security’s imminent insolvency. 

The source is just as the trustees say.  It is a system that was designed nearly a century ago, for a population with a ratio of workers to retirees much different from today. 

By 1945, once the program matured, the ratio was about 42 to 1.

From there the ratio fell sharply as more retirees became eligible: 

• 16.5 in 1950

• 8.6 in 1955

• 5.1 in 1960

• 3.2–3.4 through the 1970s–2000s 

• 2.8 by 2013

• 2.7 today

• Trustees Report projects it'll settle around 2.3 by 2040.

So, that’s the good news, if you can call it that.  The ratio is about as low as it will get – unless AI changes that, which it might. 

That means, the next “fix” might be the last that’s necessary, at least for a few generations. 

IN 1997, I gave a guest lecture to an economics class at Clemson University, laying out the problems with Social Security’s solvency and concluding that the proper thing to do would be to convert it into a defined contribution system, like 401(k)s, rather than a defined benefit system, like pensions. 

My lecture was not well received, even by an economics class of young people, and the instructor was apologetic when I left. He had invited me because he heard me making the same case on talk radio in Greenville, SC, and he want his class to hear my case. He thought it would be better received.  

George W. Bush briefly flirted with trying to convert Social Security to a hybrid defined benefit/defined contribution system, much like many states have done since, but his efforts were interrupted by 9/11. 

Because the structure of Social Security has always been a simple pipeline from today’s workers to today’s retirees, the only thing that can keep up with the falling ratio is either higher taxes or lower benefits, on some or all taxpayers and/or beneficiaries. The more we choose “some” instead of “all,” through means-testing, the more we turn Social Security into another welfare program. 

The next “fix” will almost certainly include more of the same, since the opportunity to convert it to a defined contribution program has long passed.  

When I first proposed the conversion in 1997, with a 20-year phase-in, it was when our annual deficit will still small enough to absorb the temporary impact. Any conversion to a defined contribution program would require that the treasury be allowed to temporarily pay some of the defined benefits during the transition period. 

Treasury, which is now repaying both interest and principal on Social Security’s special bonds, and, though not directly related, also paying $1 trillion a year just on the interest on money it has borrowed in the past, can no longer afford to fund the transition period. 

When Congress can no longer avoid that third rail of politics, they will fix Social Security again, by increasing payroll taxes on some or all, by reducing benefits on some or all, or by borrowing even more money, or some combination of some of the above. 

My best guess is that they will apply means-tested tax increases and benefit cuts, but they will also, for the first time, allow and instruct Treasury to borrow even more money to fund Social Security. 

That will make the fewest people angry, which is always Congress’s #1 goal.

Ralph Bristol is the former long-time morning talk radio host broadcasting on Supertalk 99.7 WTN. He was one of the less provocative and bombastic of conservative radio personalities, more thoughtful and grounded in conservative ideas. He left talk radio in 2018 and retired. He lives in Nashville. 

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