Working people, especially those over or approaching 65, find themselves facing exorbitant prices for groceries, utilities, rent, health care and more. On June 18, the federal government announced Social Security payments and Medicare benefits will both be slashed quicker than expected, in less than 10 years.
Government yearly income allocated to Social Security will no longer be able to pay full retirement and disability benefits in 2034, the program’s trustees reported, a full year earlier than they said last year. The government has no plan to use any other income source to cover the deficit. This means monthly benefits workers get will automatically be reduced by 19%.
The report also said Medicare will no longer be able to cover 100% of the benefits it pays starting in 2033, three years earlier than they announced last year. Government payments will be summarily cut by 11%, leaving workers to try and find a new way cover all their medical bills.
This situation reflects the deepening economic and social crisis the capitalist rulers are forcing onto the backs of the working class today. As the U.S. population ages, coupled with record lows in the birth rate in recent years, the government collects less taxes. Their answer is to slash gains won by workers in the labor upsurge of the 1930s and the mass proletarian movement that overthrew Jim Crow in the 1950s and ’60s.
The fertility rate has fallen to 1.6 births per woman over her lifetime today, well below the 2.1 births needed to maintain the country’s population. Workers today face growing obstacles to being able to move out on their own and raise a family. The capitalist rulers have no intention to allocate funds for workers whose labor no longer produces profits.
The only saving grace is immigration — attacked by both Democrat Joseph Biden and Republican Donald Trump.
Assault on retired workers
Nearly 69 million people — including retirees and workers with disabilities — receive Social Security checks each month, totaling about $1.6 trillion in annual benefits.
For an astonishing 27% of these individuals — 16.4 million, supposedly in their “golden years” — this is their only source of income. For another 44%, Social Security amounts to three-quarters of their entire income. And Social Security’s “cost-of-living” raises each year are calculated in ways that never meet the pace of inflation. In 2025, they rose by a measly 2.5%.
The government deducts 7.65% from workers’ wages each week with the promise that it will be used to cover your future on Social Security and Medicare. This is one of the most regressive forms of taxation workers face — billionaires like Elon Musk and Warren Buffet pay the same rate as you and me. The federal government then gambles with these funds, investing them in stocks, bonds and other forms of speculation, where a downturn in the capitalist market could lead to an even faster collapse of retirement and health care for tens of millions.
The Socialist Workers Party says a comfortable retirement and 100%-paid health care is the right of every worker. We are fighting to build a party capable of challenging the rule of the capitalist thieves for political power. Join us!