Larry Kotlikoff

Roy Farmer of Grand Rapids Michigan has Cerebral Palsy. He’s 32. In 2019, out of the blue, he received a claw back letter from Social Security demanding he repay $4,902 that his (now deceased) mother received back when he was 11. Roy has spent over three years appealing this judgement. He’s been denied twice. More from Kotlikoff Forbes editorial.

Over half of working-age Americans face lifetime marginal tax rates (including direct taxes and loss of entitlement benefits) above 43 percent. One in ten in the bottom fifth face tax rates above 70 percent, effectively locking them into poverty. For some would-be-workers, the tax rates exceed 100 percent.

Extremely high LMTRs reflect the complete loss of family benefits, in the current and future years, from programs such as Medicaid – which ends benefits abruptly if one’s income or assets exceed specific thresholds by even one dollar. More.

Social Security has committed and continues to commit huge fraud against 13,000 plus widow(er)s who collectively have been swindled out of $130 million. Those are the figures of Social Security’s own Inspector General.  More

That’s the difference between the federal government’s spending commitments and its income – looking indefinitely into the future. Closing the gap through time requires an immediate and permanent 41.3 percent increase in all federal taxes or an immediate and permanent 35.3 percent cut in all non interest federal spending. More

One disabled lady was clawed back for over $300,000 for a mistake that Social Security admitted in writing was theirs! If she doesn’t repay, Social Security will almost always stop sending people like her a single penny until they pay “what they owe.” This can take years or decades.  More

Our country’s fiscal gap is 7.7 percent of GDP. This means we need to collect 7.7 percent more in taxes, every year starting now, to cover all the future spending the CBO projects. Alternatively, we need to immediately and permanently lower the path of federal spending by 7.7 percent of each future year’s GDP. Or we can do neither of these things and dig an even deeper hole for our kids.  More

The Social Security administration has committed and continues to commit huge fraud against 13,000 plus widow(er)s who collectively have been swindled out of $130 million. These figures are those of Social Security’s own Inspector General. More

The Secure 2.0 Act, which Wall Street loves, gives retirees the ability to defer taxable withdrawals from their IRA accounts from the current age 72 to 73 in 2023, if you reach 72 in that year or later, and to 75 starting in 2033. That may not be a good financial decision, however.  More

90% of Americans are likely to benefit if they wait until age 70 to claim their Social Security benefits. Yet only 6% do so. If you add up the loss of benefits from these decisions over the remainder of a retiree’s lifetime, the typical retiree is leaving $182,370 (in present-value terms) on the table by claiming benefits too soon. More

The COLA is supposed to keep our (I’m also a recipient) benefits even with inflation. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The COLA is calculated based on the rise in the Consumer Price Index between September 30th and October 1st of the previous year. Hence, we’re getting compensated for past annual inflation, with a three-month lag to boot! This leaves us perpetually behind the eight ball. More