Just Facts

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09/25/2026

America’s murder rate has dropped to astonishing lows under President Trump, but Jen Psaki of MS Now is shrouding this reality and the causes of it.

Links to sources in the comments below.

09/23/2026

Gavin Newsom claims that California is “running the 4th largest economy in the world 9 out of 10 days on 100% clean energy.”

IN FACT, the vast bulk of California’s energy is provided by fossil fuels, its economy is nowhere close to the 4th largest in the world, and Newsom’s “clean” energy agenda is expensive and sometimes dirty. Here are the specifics:

• The latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration reveal that 73% of California’s energy was provided by fossil fuels in 2024, while 18% was provided by renewables, 3% by nuclear, and 7% by electricity imports from other states, Canada, and Mexico.

• Newsom’s statement only accounts for electricity (a subsector of total energy), and he later altered his boast about “100% clean energy” to “100% clean energy for at least part of the day” without issuing a correction and without disclosing how much of the day.

• Contrary to Newsom’s brag that his state has leapfrogged Japan to become the 4th largest economy in the world, Japan’s economy is actually 56% larger than California’s, but Newsom converts Japanese yen into U.S. dollars using a dishonest method that makes the economies of locations with high prices seem larger than reality, and sources like Wikipedia, Google Gemini, and CNN parrot his deceitful claim.

• California gets more of its electricity from solar than any other state, and Newsom says that solar is the “cheapest form of energy,” but California has the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S., or twice the national average, and this doesn’t even begin to account for all of the government spending on solar that is borne by taxpayers instead of consumers.

• California has banned the sale of all new gasoline-powered cars starting in 2035, and Newsom alleges this will require “100% of new car sales in California to be zero-emission vehicles” like “electric cars.”

• Newsom’s assertion about “zero emission” ignores major pollutants emitted over the lifecycles of the cars, such as “raw material extraction, material transportation, ultimate product disposal, etc.” and all pollutants which don’t come out of a tailpipe like “tire wear, brake wear, road surface wear and resuspension of road dust.”

• At least 5 recent studies have found that EVs emit more toxic or cancer-causing pollutants over their lifecycles than gasoline-powered cars.

• Despite Newsom’s “clean energy” agenda, California dominates the American Lung Association’s list of cities with the “most polluted” air in the nation, including 6 of the worst 10 cities for ozone pollution, 4 of the worst 10 cities for short-term particle pollution, and 5 of the worst 10 cities for year-round particle pollution.

Hyperlinks to the sources of all the facts above are available at https://www.justfactsdaily.com/in-fact/n0000899

09/22/2026

Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the 1619 Project, claims that black children “languish” academically because the “racism” of “our unjust society” gives “students of color” less “resources” than white pupils.

IN FACT, school districts with large portions of black students spend about the same amount per student as other districts, but they have far worse outcomes which are strongly associated with leftist policies and mindsets that Hannah-Jones embraces. Here are the specifics:

• Across a broad range of measures, the average educational outcomes of black and Hispanic students are far below that of whites and Asians.

• A common explanation for such disparities is that schools with high proportions of minority students receive less funding per student than other schools, an allegation that has been made by Elizabeth Warren, the New York Times, the Associated Press, Education Week, NPR, and Bernie Sanders.

• Those claims are based on studies that exclude federal education funding, which flows overwhelmingly to schools in low-income areas. However, the authors of these studies bury that fact in their publications, misleading people who don’t carefully read them.

• For a prime example, Hannah-Jones alleges that “schools in predominantly nonwhite districts receive $23 billion less in annual funding than their heavily white counterparts, according to a 2019 analysis by EdBuild.” In reality, EdBuild’s analysis excludes federal funds without saying a word about it except on a separate webpage of “research methods” where it tacitly reveals this by citing “revenues from state and local sources” and ignoring federal funds except when subtracting out charter school revenues.

• In contrast, wide-ranging studies that include all sources of funding have found that for the past 50 years, school districts with large portions of minority students spend about the same amount per student as other districts, including analyses conducted by the left-leaning Urban Institute, the U.S. Department of Education, PhD economist Derek Neal from the University of Chicago, the conservative Heritage Foundation, and the center/left Brookings Institution.

• Contrary to racist views that minority children are intellectually inferior or that their parents are to blame for their poor performance, empirical facts show that students of all races and backgrounds can and do excel — if they have competent schooling.

• Public K–12 schools are mainly run by local governments, and Democrats have dominated the local governments of minority communities for decades.

• In institutions that are dominated by Democrats, the doctrines of leftism are treated as conventional wisdom and righteous causes, including socialism, intersectionality, extreme environmentalism, s*xual licentiousness, and negative views of the police.

• Schools run by leftists devote less time to teaching practical skills because curriculums are packed with progressive priorities like critical race theory, social justice, environmentalism, and s*xual instruction.

• Schools run by leftists instill a victim mentality in students, a defining element of intersectionality that is associated with weak self-control and less ability to persist in challenging tasks.

• Schools run by leftists have lax disciplinary standards that allow unruly students to disrupt the learning of the entire classroom, which Hannah-Jones saw first-hand when she chose to enroll her daughter in a New York City public school that is “low-income and mostly Black” because she “felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage.”

• Schools run by leftists place the demands of teachers’ unions — which are a major source of funding to Democrats — over the desires of parents and the welfare of students.

• Likewise, Hannah-Jones forbad her daughter from choosing a private school after placing her in two New York City public schools that Hannah-Jones now admits “cheated” her daughter out of a quality education.

• In 2020, the education research group Brightbeam compared student outcomes in the 12 most progressive and 12 most conservative U.S. cities and found that black and Hispanic “students in America’s most progressive cities face greater racial inequity in achievement and graduation rates than students living in the nation’s most conservative cities, even though per-student “spending is actually much higher in most progressive cities.”

• The study, conducted by Brightbeam while Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, was on their board, also found that “there are U.S. cities where little to no” racial “gaps exist,” and “those cities happen to be conservative.”

• Yet, Hannah-Jones ends her essay by declaring that “there is no absolution” for “me,” “you,” or “any of us” as long as we allow “children to languish simply because those children have been born Black and poor in a nation of racism and riches.”

Because association does not prove causation, these facts cannot determine if the leftist doctrines endorsed by Hannah-Jones cause these children to languish, but they widely open the door to this possibility.

Hyperlinks to the sources of all the facts above are available at https://www.justfactsdaily.com/in-fact/n0000897

09/21/2026

Elizabeth Warren claims that “states are about to face an ‘existential crisis’ as the federal government slashes its share of SNAP funding from 50% to 25%.”

IN FACT, the rates cited by Warren only apply to state administrative expenses, federal taxpayers currently provide 95% of SNAP funding, and a provision of the BBB will reduce this to 92%. Here are the specifics:

• SNAP benefits, previously known as Food Stamps, are currently funded by federal taxpayers but partially administered by the states, which certify people for eligibility and disperse the benefits, while the federal government certifies retailers for participation and conducts oversight.

• Per a report on SNAP by the Congressional Research Service, “The federal government currently funds 100% of benefit costs, and the state’s administrative costs are currently shared 50/50 with the federal government.”

• In 2024, states funded $5 billion of SNAP administrative costs, while the federal government spent $100 billion on benefits and administrative costs, or 95% of the total — not 50% as Warren alleges.

• Per the Congressional Research Service, the Big Beautiful Bill will increase states’ shares of their SNAP administrative costs to 75% starting in 2027, thus reducing the federal share to 25%.

• Because states’ share of their administrative costs only account for 5% of all SNAP funding, this provision of the BBB will reduce the federal share of SNAP funding to 92% — not 25% as Warren alleges while she declares that “Congress must reverse these cuts.”

• Federal law gives states flexibility to set eligibility standards for SNAP, which has resulted in situations like a millionaire in Minnesota legally receiving SNAP benefits.

• Legislation and waivers granted by President Obama resulted in situations like an able-bodied California man not working while spending his days surfing, partying, and legally using SNAP to buy foods like sushi and lobster.

• In 2023, 28 states had SNAP overpayment error rates that exceeded 10%, including some as high as 21%, 33%, and 60%.

• To hold states accountable for wasting SNAP funds, the BBB will require them to pay for 5% of the SNAP benefits they disperse if their overpayment error rate exceeds 6%, rising to a 10% share if their error rate is over 10%, and then to a 15% share if their error rate is more than 15%.

• The BBB also prevents future presidents from raising SNAP benefits above and beyond the rate of food inflation, which President Biden did for the first time in the history of the program.

• Per the Government Accountability Office, Biden raised SNAP benefits by “21 percent compared to the previous inflation-adjusted” amount without adequate “economic analysis,” “disclosure,” or “documentation.”

• From 1980 to 2025, the portion of the U.S. population receiving SNAP benefits rose from 9.3% to 12.3%, while the portion of people in poverty declined from 13.0% to 10.2%.

Hyperlinks to the sources of all the facts above are available at https://www.justfactsdaily.com/in-fact/n0000896

09/17/2026

Bernie Sanders claims that President Trump is “funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”

IN FACT, Sanders is projecting the genocidal crimes of the Islamic Resistance Movement — commonly known as Hamas — onto Israel and Trump. Here are the specifics:

• In 2000, peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis organized by Democrat President Bill Clinton fell apart because the Palestinians, in the words of Clinton, “said no to everything.”

• At that time, Israel had a “prosocially minded leftist government” that was eager for peace and offered far reaching concessions like giving the Palestinians 90% of the West Bank and “a capital in East Jerusalem with sovereignty over the Christian and Muslim quarters of the old city,” but the Palestinians rejected every proposal without making counterproposals.

• In the wake of the failed talks, Palestinians launched a barrage of “devastating su***de bombings” that killed hundreds and wounded thousands of Israeli civilians, leading the people of Israel to elect a rightist government and build a border barrier along the West Bank to block “terrorists from entering Israeli population centers.”

• In 2006, the people of Palestine voted to give control of their government to Hamas, whose “Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement” calls for “killing the Jews” and summons the “vast Arab and Islamic world” to join in this “Jihad” “until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.”

• However, the border barrier — which was opposed by the United Nations — led to a dramatic decline in su***de bombings, and the number of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians stayed at greatly reduced levels for more than a decade while leaders of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad remarked that the barrier was impeding their ability to carry out such attacks.

• On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out a large-scale military assault that penetrated the Gaza border barrier at dozens of locations by using drones, explosives, and construction equipment and then proceeded to murder, torture, r**e, and kidnap hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children.

• After 10/7, about three-quarters of Palestinians continued to support Hamas, and Hamas “continued to bombard” Israel “with rocket attacks, causing more deaths and injuries.”

• In response to those atrocities, Israel killed Palestinian militants while warning civilians to get out of harm’s way and taking other measures to reduce civilian casualties, even when it endangered their own soldiers.

• In contrast, Hamas used civilians for human shields and exploited hospitals, mosques, and schools to launch missiles, hold hostages, and hide terrorists, all blatant violations of the laws of war.

• Nevertheless, the UN Human Rights Council — whose members include numerous authoritarian regimes — accused Israel of genocide by ignoring reams of facts which contradict that allegation and implicate Hamas.

• Meanwhile, U.S. politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–MA) have declared that “Israel needs to stop bombing Gaza” because Israel is “obligated under the laws of war to protect civilians” — while in reality — the laws of war require combatants to “reduce the risk of harm” to civilians “only to the extent feasible or consistent with military necessity,” as Israel does.

• Likewise, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D–MI) blamed Israel for a deadly explosion at a hospital in Gaza when all of the evidence pointed to a Palestinian rocket misfire.

• Similarly, Tucker Carlson platformed a guest who showed multiple pictures of a Palestinian boy named “Amir” and stated that he personally witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shoot and kill him — while in reality — the boy was found alive and well less than one week later.

• The religion of Islam explicitly permits lying “at times of war, as a tactic or to demoralize the enemy and win the war,” Hamas has declared a perpetual war until Israel is “obliterated,” and other factions of Islam have joined a jihad to “achieve global domination — through any means, including violence.”

Hyperlinks to the sources of all the facts above are available at https://www.justfactsdaily.com/in-fact/n0000894

09/16/2026

Zohran Mamdani claims that he’s suing the federal government for denying “green cards or certain visas to individuals who receive benefits like SNAP and Medicaid,” because these people are “entitled” to receive those benefits.

IN FACT, federal law prohibits people from coming to the U.S. if they are “likely at any time to become” a burden on taxpayers, and Trump is enforcing this law unlike prior presidents. Here are the specifics:

• Federal law generally prohibits foreigners from entering the U.S. if they are “likely at any time to become a public charge,” meaning a burden on taxpayers.

• Federal law also states that “self-sufficiency has been a basic principle of United States immigration law since this country’s earliest immigration statutes,” and “it continues to be the immigration policy of the United States that aliens within the nation’s borders not depend on public resources to meet their needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities and the resources of their families, their sponsors, and private organizations.”

• In 1999, Democrat President Bill Clinton issued guidelines that excluded “non-cash or special-purpose cash” welfare benefits like Medicaid, SNAP, housing assistance, energy assistance, school lunch, and Head Start from being considered under a “public charge determination.”

• Non-cash welfare benefits provide for the bulk of all products and services consumed by the poorest 20% of households in the United States.

• In 2019, President Trump issued a regulation that rescinded some of Clinton’s guidelines and defined a “public charge” as someone who is likely to receive welfare benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, and housing assistance for a total of more 12 months over a period of three years.

• Following the issuance of Trump’s regulation, various cities, counties, states, elected officials, and special interest groups filed lawsuits to overturn it and kept it tied up in courts until Joe Biden became president in 2021. Biden then chose to not defend the regulation in court, rendering it toothless.

• In 2022, Biden issued a regulation that reinstated Clinton’s guidelines and restricted the federal government from considering other forms of welfare when determining if a person is likely to become a burden on taxpayers.

• In 2025, Trump proposed a regulation to rescind Biden’s 2022 regulation and make other changes to the public charge rules.

• In 2026, Trump’s regulation, which requires the government to “consider the receipt of any means tested public benefits” when making a public charge determination, was finalized.

• Following the issuance of Trump’s regulation, coalitions of states, counties, and cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle are now filing lawsuits to block it.

Hyperlinks to the sources of all the facts above are available at https://www.justfactsdaily.com/in-fact/n0000893

09/15/2026

U.S. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D–WA) claims that the U.S. government engaged in “unforgivable” “profiling” after the 9/11 attacks.

IN FACT, unessential bans on profiling impeded the FBI from acting on intelligence that may have prevented the 9/11 attacks and saved 3,000 lives. Here are the specifics:

• On July 10, 2001 — 2 months before the 9/11 terror attacks — an FBI Special Agent in Phoenix sent a memo to 11 people at FBI Headquarters and its New York Field Office warning that an “inordinate number” of “Sunni Muslim” foreigners who are “supporters” of “Usama Bin Laden” were “attending” or “have attended civil aviation universities and colleges” in Arizona, and there was “reason to believe” they were doing this to “conduct terror activity against civil aviation targets.”

• Beyond providing intel like the fact that one of the suspects had photos of Bin Laden and other terror leaders “tacked to his livingroom wall,” the memo asked FBI Headquarters to “discuss this matter with other elements of the U.S. intelligence community” and “obtain visa information” on aliens attending aviation schools and track them.

• Instead of taking “action” on the memo, recipients of it “discussed whether they would be able to implement” the memo’s recommendations “because the issue of racial profiling was ‘hot,’” and they “believed that the FBI’s attorneys” in the National Security Law Unit “would consider it racial profiling to send leads to the field to collect information about Middle Eastern men who happened to be attending schools related to civil aviation.”

• One month later on September 11, 2001, 19 Muslim aliens who were living in the U.S. slaughtered 2,977 people by hijacking 4 airliners loaded with people and flying them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the ground.

• In the run-up to the 9/11 attacks, the Clinton administration ended a requirement that passengers flagged as potential terrorists — as 10 of the 19 hijackers were — be subject to a “secondary screening” of their “person and carry-on belongings” on days with Level III Aviation Security Alerts, which was the case on 9/11. A “central” reason for this decision was “fear of potential discrimination or the appearance of it.”

• After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration issued guidance that called “racial profiling” “morally wrong,” banned “federal law enforcement officers” from acting “on the belief that race or ethnicity signals a higher risk of criminality,” and explicitly imposed “more restrictions” on “racial profiling” in “many cases” than the “Constitution requires.”

• The Constitution’s 14th Amendment requires “equal protection of the law” for all “persons,” and the Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that this “prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race,” but it doesn’t ban law enforcement from using race as a factor to identify suspects, as long as it is not the only factor.

• A 2000 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights notes that “there is no federal legislative ban on racial profiling.” Certain politicians have been sponsoring bills to enact such a ban since at least 2001, but none have become law.

• As explained in a paper published by the Journal of Criminal Justice, “Since crime rates do vary according to age, s*x, and racial groups, a stop and search strategy which does not take these attributes into account is an invitation to higher crime rates.”

• Contrary to the allegations of racial activists, people of different races in the U.S. are generally stopped, arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced at rates that accord with the frequency and severity of their criminality. A notable exception to this rule is murder because blacks are more likely than whites to get away with this crime.

• Per the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Supreme Court, the core duty of government is protecting people’s life and liberty, which the federal government failed to do on 9/11 partly because it missed multiple opportunities to uncover the plot due to gratuitous bans on profiling.

Hyperlinks to the sources of all the facts above are available at https://www.justfactsdaily.com/in-fact/n0000892

09/10/2026

Candace Owens claims “there’s no evidence” Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie Kirk and alleges that “Charlie’s mic exploded” and Robinson’s r***e could not have fired the fatal bullet because it caused “minimal damage to Charlie’s neck though it would have taken down a bear.”

IN FACT, a handwritten note, texts, DNA, engraved am******on, videos, and witnesses incriminate Robinson in the murder of Kirk, and bullet fragments consistent with Robinson’s r***e and ammo were found in Kirk. Here are the specifics:

• The official charging document against Robinson states that his roommate turned over a text message to the police in which Robinson wrote, “ ‘drop what you are doing, look under my keyboard.’ The roommate looked under the keyboard and found a note stating, ‘I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it.’ Police found a photograph of this note.”

• The charging document records that Robinson’s roommate texted him, “you weren’t the one who did it right????” Robinson replied, “I am, I’m sorry”

• The charging document records Robinson texting, “only thing I left was the r***e wrapped in a towel,” “I had planned to grab my r***e from my drop point shortly after, but most of that side of town got locked down,” “remember how I was engraving bullets,” “I’m worried what my old man would do if I didn’t bring back grandpas r***e,” “the feds released a photo of the r***e, and it is very unique,” and “my dad wants photos of the r***e.”

• Surveillance videos show a person resembling Robinson entering the campus before Kirk’s murder while “walking with an unusual gait” that is “consistent with a r***e being hidden in his pants,” climbing “onto the roof” where there was a “clear shooting corridor” to Kirk, and “running across the roof carrying an item whose shape is consistent with a r***e” “immediately after the shot was fired.”

• Police “followed the suspect’s escape path to the northeast end of campus,” “entered a wooded area,” and found a “bolt-action .30-06 r***e” that was “wrapped in a towel” and “contained one spent round and three unspent rounds,” each with an “etched inscription.”

• DNA “consistent with Robinson’s was found on the trigger, other parts of the r***e, the fired cartridge casing, two of the three unfired cartridges, and the towel.”

• On the “day after the shooting, Robinson’s mother saw the photo of the shooter in the news and thought the shooter looked like her son.” “Robinson’s father agreed” and “believed that the r***e that police suspected the shooter used matched a r***e that was given to his son as a gift,” so he “contacted his son and asked him to send a photo of the r***e.”

• When the police “executed a search warrant on Robinson’s residence,” they “discovered a shell casing with etchings like the etchings found on the shells” in the recovered r***e.

• Per an academic book on gunshot wounds and forensics, “centerfire” r***e hunting bullets like the “.30-06” are “designed to deform” in their “passage through the body” and hurl “fragments of lead” into “surrounding tissues.” Thus, they can create “massive internal injuries” with wounds that have a “benign external appearance.”

• In keeping with the academic book and refuting Owens’ allegation of an exploding microphone, Kirk’s autopsy recovered “one bullet jacket fragment and four lead fragments.”

• When the fact above was revealed in March 2026, Owens posted a Daily Mail headline that read, “Bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did NOT match r***e allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson.” Along with this, Owens wrote, “Where are all my neocons who have been ‘overwhelmed’ by the non existent evidence against Tyler Robinson? You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Hope the money was worth your soul.”

• In reality, the bullet fragments were consistent with Robinson’s r***e and ammo, but the “result of the comparison was inconclusive” because the “.30-caliber class” “bullet jacket fragment” recovered from Kirk was “deformed/damaged,” and “firearms that produce general rifling characteristics similar to those observed” on the “bullet jacket fragment include numerous makes and models.”

• Nevertheless, Owens declared 4 months later that Robinson is “being wrongly framed for the murder of Charlie Kirk,” and she continues to this day spreading conspiracies while citing anonymous “sources.”

Hyperlinks to the sources of all the facts above are available at https://www.justfactsdaily.com/in-fact/n0000891

09/09/2026

Elizabeth Warren claims it’s “wrong” that a “middle-class nurse pays a higher payroll tax rate than a highly-paid CEO,” and “it’s time to protect Social Security by scrapping the cap so higher-income earners” “pay their fair share.”

IN FACT, higher-income earners are already paying more than 9 times their promised share of Social Security taxes. Here are the specifics:

• In 1935, Congress and Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt enacted SS with an explicit promise that “the most you will ever pay” for the program is “3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year.”

• Since then, various Congresses and Presidents have passed more than 15 laws to increase the SS payroll tax rate above the 3% promise and raise the maximum taxable wage faster than inflation.

• Adjusted for inflation, the maximum SS payroll tax is now 9.4 times the promised maximum.

• Hence, a Congressional Budget Office report on SS explains that “most high earners receive much less in benefits than they pay in taxes” for the program “over their lifetimes.”

• In addition, people with high ongoing incomes also pay a tax on their SS benefits despite an explicit pledge from the federal government that everyone who pays SS taxes for a certain length of time will receive SS benefits “regardless of the amount of property or income” they have.

• Likewise, the U.S. Treasury states that SS “benefits are generally redistributed intentionally toward lower-wage workers (i.e., benefits are progressive).”

• Lower-wage workers also receive an effective refund of most of their SS taxes through the earned income tax credit.

• Democrats and some Republicans are now lobbying to remove the cap on SS payroll taxes and make them unlimited, as Democrats did with Medicare Hospital Insurance, thereby breaking Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson’s promise that the program would cost “no more than $1 a month” per worker.

• SS and Medicare expenses have grown to the point where they now consume 51% of all federal revenues.

• Removing the cap on SS payroll taxes would radically sever the relationship between taxes paid and benefits received, further transforming SS from a social insurance program into means-tested welfare.

• Beyond redistributing money from richer to poorer people in the same generation, SS also redistributes money from younger to older generations due to its continually increasing tax burdens.

• Accounting for interest on their payroll taxes, people born in 1900 received about 7 times more in SS benefits than they paid in taxes.

• Workers who earned average wages and retired at the age of 65 in 1980 recovered the value of their payroll taxes (including interest) in 2.8 years, while for workers who retired in 2003, it took 17.4 years.

• For workers who retired in 2020, it will take 21.6 years to recover the value of their payroll taxes, assuming that SS has enough money to pay scheduled benefits for this entire period, which it is not projected to have.

• Despite multiplicative tax increases, Social Security is projected to become insolvent in 2034 mainly because the ratio of workers paying taxes to people receiving benefits has fallen by three times since 1955 and is projected to fall further.

• One the primary factors driving these financial problems is increases in life expectancy without comparable increases in the retirement age.

• Today’s SS recipients collect benefits for 36% to 40% longer than when the program began, even though the wealthiest age cohorts in the U.S. are now 65 years and older.

• While simultaneously calling for increased taxes on younger generations so that they can receive SS benefits for longer than prior generations, many people have swallowed the following myths about the causes of SS’s financial problems.

• Roughly 76% of voters believe that SS is in trouble because it has been “looted” — but in reality — this is actually a legal requirement established in the original SS Act of 1935 that all of the program’s surpluses be loaned to the federal government and paid back with interest, which has always happened and is happening right now.

• Many people believe that SS saves their money — but in reality — SS is primarily a pay-as-you-go program that funds most of its benefits by taxing people who are currently working, much like a Ponzi scheme.

• Many people believe that SS funds have been funneled to the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program — but in reality — SSI is merely administered by the Social Security Administration and is funded with general revenue taxes, not SS funds.

• Many people believe SS would be fine were it not for fraud — but in reality, fraud is relatively rare in SS compared to other government programs.

• Many people believe that illegal immigrants are draining SS — but in reality — they slightly improve its finances by using fake SS numbers to work, which forces them to pay payroll taxes while typically being unable to collect benefits.

• Many people believe that others who have never paid SS taxes are collecting benefits — but in reality — people cannot collect SS old-age or disability benefits unless they have worked while paying payroll taxes for significant periods of time, typically at least 10 years.

• All of these myths have enabled creeping socialism in which each generation of beneficiaries takes more of the next generation’s paychecks.

Hyperlinks to the sources of all the facts above are available at https://www.justfactsdaily.com/in-fact/n0000890

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