(End of the American Dream)—We are facing an unprecedented retirement crisis in this nation. Millions upon millions of Baby Boomers are retiring, and most of them are struggling. In fact, it has been estimated that 80 percent of our retirees are either struggling right now or are in serious danger of falling into financial insecurity. We are supposed to be the economic powerhouse of the world. How could we have allowed this to happen?
There are several reasons why our retirement crisis has become so severe.
First of all, people are living significantly longer than they did decades ago, and so retirees need more money these days.
Secondly, most retirees did not save enough for retirement, and many of them entered their retirement years carrying high levels of debt.
Thirdly, healthcare costs are completely and utterly out of control in this country. We desperately need to do something about this.
Fourthly, high inflation has made the cost of living extremely oppressive.
Fifthly, pension plans are less common then they once were, and so more retirees than ever are depending upon Social Security as their primary source of income.
When you step back and consider the big picture, it is clear that we have a major problem on our hands, and there are no easy solutions.
The following are 18 incredible statistics about America’s retirement crisis that will blow your mind…
- Back in 1940, the average life expectancy of a 65-year-old was about 14 years. Now, it is over 20 years.
- The number of Americans that are 65 and older will rise to about 77 million by 2035.
- Americans that are retiring now will need an average of $1.22 million to last thirty years in retirement.
- Only about half of all U.S. households currently have retirement savings accounts.
- One recent survey found that 93 percent of Republicans, 86 percent of Democrats, and 94 percent of independents believe that there is a retirement savings crisis in this country.
- 47 million U.S. households with older adults are either “financially struggling” or are “at risk of falling into economic insecurity”.
- Approximately 80 percent of Americans have thought about putting off retirement due to financial reasons.
- Over 90 percent of Americans are concerned that they may have to work more years than they originally planned.
- There is supposed to be approximately 2.7 trillion dollars in the Social Security trust fund, but our politicians took all of that money and spent it instead. Today, our Social Security trust fund is simply a colossal pile of government bonds.
- Social Security is the primary source of income for most Americans over the age of 65.
- According to the National Academy of Social Insurance, 33 percent of Social Security recipients receive all or nearly all of their income from Social Security.
- Nearly nine out of ten people age 65 and older are receiving Social Security benefits.
- In 2009, nearly 51 million Americans received $672 billion in Social Security benefits. In 2024, nearly 68 million Americans received $1.5 trillion in Social Security benefits.
- More than 180 million U.S. workers have earnings covered by Social Security, and they pay approximately 1.2 trillion dollars in Social Security payroll taxes.
- As you can see from the previous two items, our Social Security payroll taxes are not enough to cover the amount being paid out in benefits.
- The average Social Security benefit for a retired worker in the U.S. was $1,922 per month in September 2024.
- Back in 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers. In 2010, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2035, it is being projected that there will be approximately 2.4 workers for each retiree.
- Close to 50 percent of all American workers do not believe that the Social Security system will pay them benefits when they retire.
Needless to say, our federal government is facing an unprecedented financial nightmare, and our retirement crisis is a big reason for that.
Social Security accounts for approximately 21 percent of the federal budget, and Medicare accounts for approximately 14 percent. That means that those two programs alone account for more than a third of all federal spending.
The politicians in Washington would never dare to make cuts to those programs, because elderly voters would revolt in a major way.
So if we are going to do anything to get our exploding debt under control, cutbacks will have to occur elsewhere.
But we desperately need to do something, because our 36 trillion dollar national debt is growing very rapidly and it threatens to overwhelm us. We are in so much trouble.
As our debt continues to explode and general economic conditions continue to deteriorate, I expect the plight of our retirees to continue to intensify. And that is not good news for any of us.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
