Government programs will push millions into poverty in old age

A new study predicts that 40 percent of “middle class” Americans will likely live in poverty in their later years.

Social Security and Medicare both incentivize Americans to save less, work less, and invest less. Harvard studies (which are likely quite conservative) suggest that Social Security alone caused the U.S. to be at least 3 percent poorer by 1980. This gap between what is and what might have been has almost certainly grown in the 38 years that followed.

And because Medicare, Medicaid and obamacare increase demand for health care without increasing supply, they have all caused prices to rise significantly.

The study by the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School concluded that many pension accounts are substantially underfunded. Some 74 percent of senior citizens must continue to work in retirement.