Law & Legal & Attorney Politics

What Would Happen to Social Security Benefits If Life Expectancy Rates Increased?

The Social Security ACT was signed into law in 1935 as part of FDR's New Deal Program.
The Act provided benefits to retirees when they turned 65.
In 1935, the average life expectancy was 58 for men and 62 for women, although those statistics are distorted in comparison to today's life expectancy rates as a result of the significantly higher infant mortality rates in this era.
For adults who lived past 21, the life expectancy is only 5 years less than it is today.
So with hundreds of billions of dollars spent on medical research, a prescription medication available from Big Pharma for just about anything and everything that could aid a human, the mapping of the human genome, exponential gains in medical technology and scientists and doctor's understanding of the human body - with all that, we have only added 5 years to the average life expectancy.
And this does not even factor in all the lives saved due to better medical facilities, transportation of patients to special care facilities and the fact that much of the country residing in rural areas never even had access to hospitals for emergencies back in the 1930's.
If you factor these infrastructure enhancements into the equation, then a strong case could be made that without even one cent being spent on medical research, technology advancement and prescription drugs, that the life expectancy rate from the 30's would be at or higher than it is today.
I find this incredible.
This evidence strongly suggests that either the advancements made in medical science are providing no benefit to Americans or that there are opposing forces offsetting the advancements made in medical science so that the life expectancy rates do not rise.
And I think there is irrefutable evidence to the fact that there have been significant advancements in medical science over the past 80 years and these advancements have saved millions of lives - at least temporarily.
Therefore, it can be concluded that it is a fact that there must be opposing forces offsetting the advancements made in medical science and these forces are keeping the average life span of Americans from increasing.
Why would anyone want to do this? There are currently over 54 million people receiving social security benefits at an annual cost in excess of $700 billion.
With in excess of 10,000 people becoming eligible for social security each day - a trend that is scheduled to continue for the next 18 years, imagine what would happen to the already maligned SSI system if people started living an extra 5, 10 or even 15 years.
Now imagine what would happen if the tens of millions of U.
citizens who now rely and/or will come to rely on Social security just to scrape by, stopped getting those checks.
I will leave it to your own imagination to decide what would happen if that were to occur and what certain elements of the power structure may currently be doing to insure that vision of a future America never comes to fruition.

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