President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash federal government spending have ignited a new debate about the future of Social Security.

One idea that has been brought up before — privatizing the now public program — is getting new attention.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said Wednesday he supports more individual ownership in Social Security, though he said he would not necessarily use the term privatizing because it has toxic connotations.

“The problem we have now, we have a plan called Social Security that doesn’t grow with the economy,” said Fink, speaking at the BlackRock retirement summit in Washington, D.C.

‘Real battle’ brewing over Social Security’s future

An Australian lawyer has sounded the alarm over the $3.5 trillion wealth transfer that Baby Boomers are about to pass on to younger generations. Will disputes are already rising due to growing wealth and Aussies are being warned they could “squander away tens of thousands” trying to get their inheritance if their loved ones don’t have their affairs in order.

Baby Boomers, who are Australia’s richest generation, are expected to transfer $3.5 trillion to younger generations over the coming decades. The huge scale of wealth means the stakes are higher for many Aussies when it comes to their inheritance.

Justice Family Lawyers principal Hayder Shkara told Yahoo Finance he expected disputes over wills would continue to rise as Baby Boomers begin the “great wealth transfer”.

“This is the biggest intergenerational wealth shift in history, and with that comes heightened tensions, particularly in families where expectations don’t align with reality,” Shkara said.

“One of the key drivers of these disputes is the rising value of real estate. A house that was purchased decades ago for a modest sum could now be worth millions, and that changes how family members perceive their entitlements.”

In Sydney, for example, the average property value has skyrocketed to $1.18 million.

“We also see a rise in blended families, estranged relationships, and informal caregiving arrangements, all of which can complicate inheritance matters,” Shkara said.

Inheritances have already more than doubled, with the Productivity Commission finding they had increased from $24 billion in 2022 to $52 billion in 2018.

Aussies over 60 are expected to transfer an average of $175 billion per year in wealth over the next two decades.

More adults challenging wills

There has already been a significant increase in family provision claims, which is when someone feels they’ve been unfairly left out of a will or didn’t get enough.

Shkara said he commonly saw children who cared for their elderly parents challenge wills when they found their parents had distributed assets equally among all siblings.

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — An Oklahoma City retiree says his Social Security benefits were suspended without warning — and with no explanation given when he reached out. He worries it may have to do with the place he was born, and ongoing Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutbacks.

The man, James McCaffrey, who was born to an active-duty U.S. soldier at an overseas Army base, says because of recent comments from DOGE leader Elon Musk, he’s worried his benefits were cut because of his foreign birthplace.

Earlier this month, Musk, the billionaire head of DOGE, pushed for major cuts to Social Security, calling it a “Ponzi scheme,” claiming the system is rife with people fraudulently receiving benefits.

Particularly, Musk claimed during an interview with Fox Business, with no evidence, that many illegal immigrants are receiving benefits, calling for them to be removed from Social Security’s rolls.

The Hill reported economists say the levels of fraud Musk has talked about “just don’t exist.”

Earlier this month, NBC News reported former Social Security administrator Martin O’Malley warned that DOGE’s cuts to Social Security could disrupt benefits for millions of Americans for the first time since Social Security’s founding.

Now, McCaffrey worries he may have been one of the first of them.

An unexpected bill and unanswered questions

McCaffrey said he started to think something was often when he received an unexpected Medicare bill.

“It said that I needed to pay $740 before the 25th of this month or I was going to lose my Medicare,” McCaffrey said.

That seemed odd, since his Medicare payment is normally deducted from his Social Security check.

“So I called Medicare,” he said. “They returned my call after a wait and told me that they were unable to process it through my Social Security payment, that there was some problem with it. We talked for a bit. He kind of let it out that he thinks it’s a possibility that my Social Security was suspended.”

And that — definitely didn’t make sense to McCaffrey.

“I thanked him for his time and called Social Security,” he said.

After more than two and a half hours on hold with Social Security, he finally got a callback.

“They confirmed that my account was suspended,” McCaffrey said.

He says Social Security never sent him any sort of notice this was happening, so he can’t be certain the exact day his benefits were canceled.

But he knows it must have been sometime between the day he received his February Social Security check early in the month, and Feb. 27, the date written on the bill he received from Medicare.

He asked the Social Security agent if there was anything she could do to fix it.

“She said she was going to input some stuff and that she hoped that would take care of it,” he said.

And by the next morning, sure enough, the issue had been fixed.

“I just got a simple email on my phone,” McCaffrey said. “It said that my normal payment was going to resume in April.”

The email didn’t mention anything about the March payment he never received.

He took it upon himself to check his bank account, where he saw his March check had since been deposited.

“Well, that’s fine and dandy,” McAffrey said. “I enjoyed that, but they gave me no explanation.”

For him to get an explanation, he had to become his own detective of sorts.

He thought back to an experience he had two years ago when he first went to a Social Security office to apply for benefits.

“The first person I talked to at the Social Security Administration told me that I was not an American citizen,” McCaffrey said.

McCaffrey was born on a U.S. Army base in Germany, where his father was stationed for active duty.

He has an American birth certificate — officially stamped and sealed by the federal government.

“I was on American soil,” he said. “I’m American. She told me I was going to need to hire a lawyer, get a naturalization before I could even apply for Social Security.”

But when he returned another day with his birth certificate and passport, a different employee told him there was no issue.

“Got a different person, presented my things to him, and he says, ‘I don’t need these. You’re fine. I don’t know what. She’s just misinformed.’ And I’ve never had a problem with anything until [Tuesday],” McCaffrey said.

Then he remembered something he had recently seen on TV.

Elon Musk, the billionaire in charge of DOGE, spoke about Social Security during an interview on Fox Business Network.

In the interview, Musk suggested, without citing evidence, that non-citizens in large numbers are receiving Social Security benefits, and called for them to be purged from the system.

“[Federal entitlements] is also a mechanism by which Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants, by essentially paying them,” Musk said during the March 10 interview on Fox Business. “If we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave.”

That made McAffrey wonder about his own situation.

“I think they went into Social Security and suspended all foreign addresses, whether you reside at home, born on them,” he said.

KFOR reached out to the Social Security Administration for an explanation, but officials declined to comment, citing confidentiality rules, but the news station put them in touch with McCaffrey.

He says a representative with the Social Security Administration called him on Wednesday, but still offered no explanation for why his benefits were terminated.

“It makes me wonder how many other people are going to get — or have gotten — that same Medicare letter,” McCaffrey said.

He worries about people who may not have the time and resources he had to get to the bottom of what happened and get his benefits back.

“I’ve been a diligent Boy Scout type, I prepared,” he said. “But, no, I shouldn’t have to.”

McAffrey, 66, says there was one thing he most looked forward about retirement.

“More time with the grandkids,” McAffrey told Nexstar’s KFOR.

He said he made sure to save up enough retirement money to—quite frankly—spoil his three grandkids.

“I went out and bought [my granddaughter] a new jacket,” McCaffrey said. “She’s thrilled. And then her sister says, ‘well, you know, she got a new jacket. Where’s mine?’ I said, ‘I’ll get you one.’”

He also looked forward to being able to travel more with his wife, who is nearing retirement herself.

But he thought all those dreams would have to come to a halt, after he opened his mail on Tuesday.

“I’d hate to have to turn around and say, ‘Well, I have to worry about my next check,’” he said.

He also worries about people who may not share the same savings or the same financial cushion that he had to fall back on. “And you interrupt that for seven days, two weeks or even longer, and they’re in bad trouble,” he said. “They could be out of the house. They could be out of food. I don’t know.”

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink warned of a growing retirement crisis, emphasizing that only employees at top companies benefit from adequate retirement planning while many Americans feel unprepared. He urges corporate leaders and politicians to rethink the system, acknowledging younger generations’ economic anxiety and suggesting older generations should work longer to restore trust and financial security.

While short-term economic uncertainty is fairly high on the list of priorities for CEOs at the moment, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink also wants to keep the topic of retirement front and centre.

Wholesale prices were flat in February providing some more welcome news on inflation amid tariff fears, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.

The producer price index, considered a leading indicator for pipeline inflation pressures, showed no gain for the month after jumping an upwardly revised 0.6% in January, seasonally adjusted figures showed. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a 0.3% increase.

Excluding food and energy, core PPI decreased 0.1%, also against an estimate for a 0.3% rise and the first negative reading since July. Core prices excluding trade services showed a gain of 0.2%, also below a 0.3% estimate.

Stock market futures pared losses following the report while Treasury yields remained higher.

The report comes a day after the BLS reported that the consumer price index rose 0.2% for February, putting the headline inflation rate at 2.8%, a slight easing from January and some encouraging news at a time when markets are concerned over the impact that President Donald Trump’s tariffs will have on costs.

Whereas the CPI measures what consumers pay at the register for goods and services, the PPI is a gauge of final demand prices that producers get for their products.

Federal Reserve officials more closely rely on a Commerce Department inflation measure that will be released later this month, though the PPI and CPI figures feed into that report.

On a year-over-year basis, headline producer prices increased 3.2%, well ahead of the Fed’s 2% goal though below the 3.7% pace in January. The core PPI was up 3.4% in February, down 0.4 percentage point from January.

Markets are assigning near 100% odds that the Fed again will stay on hold when it’s two-day policy meeting concludes next Wednesday.

Fed officials have said repeatedly that they are taking a cautious approach, particularly when it comes to Trump’s fiscal and trade policies. Current market expectations are for the central bank to cut rates next in June and follow up with the equivalent of two more quarter percentage point reductions before the end of the year.

A 0.2% drop in services prices offset a 0.3% increase in goods. Two-thirds of the rise in goods came due to a 53.6% surge in chicken egg prices, the BLS said. Eggs have soared in part because of avian flu that has hit supplies, though there is some evidence that prices have eased in March as outbreaks have slowed.

On the services side, more than 40% of the decline came from a 1.4% decrease in margins for machinery and vehicle wholesaling.

Foot on ‘debt brake’ pedal

February’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report showed inflation pressures eased in February, calming some fears about the health of the US economy during a rocky few weeks for markets.

The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 2.8% over the prior year in February, below January’s 3% annual gain and ahead of economist expectations of a 2.9% annual increase. The index rose 0.2% over the previous month, a deceleration from the 0.5% increase in January and a beat compared to economists’ estimates of a 0.3% monthly uptick.

On a “core” basis, which strips out the more volatile costs of food and gas, prices in February climbed 0.2% over the prior month, lower than January’s 0.4% monthly gain, and 3.1% over last year — the lowest yearly increase in core CPI since April 2021.

This also marked a downtick from the 3.3% core price increases seen in the prior-month period and was ahead of Bloomberg consensus estimates. It was the first time since July that both headline and core CPI showed a deceleration in price growth.

“Today’s inflation report brings some much-needed relief for equity markets, averting immediate concerns around stagflation and giving the Fed space to cut policy rates in the coming months if economic data continue to deteriorate,” Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, said in response to the data.

“Certainly, with extraordinarily elevated policy uncertainty weighing on sentiment, retail companies beginning to sound warning bells around consumer spending, and recession concerns spiking, there is a strong likelihood that the Fed put will need to come into play relatively soon.”

Shelter moderates, gas prices decrease

Core inflation has remained stubbornly elevated due to sticky costs for shelter and services like insurance and medical care. But shelter did show further signs of easing in February, rising 4.2% on an annual basis, the smallest 12-month increase since December 2021.

On a month-over-month basis, the shelter index increased 0.3% compared to a 0.4% uptick in January. Similarly, the index for rent and owners’ equivalent rent (OER) each rose 0.3% over the prior month. Owners’ equivalent rent is the hypothetical rent a homeowner would pay for the same property.

“Housing inflation is historically the ‘stickiest’ component of inflation, meaning it takes longer to buck price trends,” Gargi Chaudhuri, chief investment and portfolio strategist at BlackRock, wrote in a note to clients. “The recent trend in housing prices keeps us optimistic on the future trajectory of inflation.”

Meanwhile, the energy index rose 0.2% month over month after jumping 1.1% in January. On a yearly basis, the energy index was down 0.2%, dragged down by gas prices, which dropped dropped 1% after a nearly 2% increase the previous month.

Coupled with the downtick in gas prices, a 4% decrease in the index for airline fares also helped ease last month’s headline figure.

Notably, food prices showed some signs of deceleration after a few sticky readings, rising 0.2% last month after a 0.5% jump in January. Egg prices, however, continued to surge — up another 10.4% after a 15.2% upswing to kick off the year, largely due to the bird flu impacting supply. On a yearly basis, egg prices have climbed 58.8% with economists warning more pain likely lies ahead.

“In 2015, bird flu caused a spike in egg prices that lasted for several months so we should expect egg prices to stay elevated in the near term,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial.

Other indexes that increased over the month include medical care, used cars and trucks, household furnishings and operations, recreation, apparel, and personal care, according to the BLS.

PARIS/CHICAGO (Reuters) -Makers of goods from sportswear to luxury cars and chemicals painted a gloomy picture on Wednesday of consumer and industrial health, hitting share prices and adding to concerns about the damage from U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars.

Increased tariffs on all U.S. steel and aluminium imports took effect on Wednesday, as Trump stepped up his campaign to reorder global trade in favour of the United States. Europe and Canada swiftly retaliated.

Trump’s plans for tariffs – and their back-and-forth implementation since he took office in January – have upended industries from cars to energy and unnerved businesses and investors. Worries that rising costs will reignite inflation, and that souring consumer sentiment could herald a U.S. recession, have caused stock markets to plunge.

At a grains conference on Tuesday in Carlsbad, California, news of Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada drew groans from the room of corporate agriculture executives, grain processors and traders. The whipsaw pace of policy changes that affect their industry has made the last six weeks seem much longer, many told Reuters.

“Nearly everyone in the economy is struggling to comprehend wild swings in Washington policies, and their implications for everyday decisions,” said Stephen Dover, chief market strategist at asset manager Franklin Templeton.

The constant flip-flopping over tariffs is paralysing industries. Automakers, for example, are unable to plan while there is a threat of 25% tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, or Europe.

“No reasonable auto executive can make such investments if the expected returns can be wiped out at the stroke of a pen,” Dover said.

Germany’s Porsche said on Wednesday it was assessing how it could pass on to consumers the cost of possible tariffs, without pressuring its margins, implying a price hike.

“For now, we are hoping there are solutions that will lead to a sensible tariff regime between regions,” Porsche CFO Jochen Breckner said on a press call.

Several automakers are doubling down on plans to produce more cars in the U.S. to escape the tariffs, but analysts said car prices are likely to increase because auto parts suppliers whose supply chains are not as localized as the car companies will be hurt.

Two major South Korean steelmakers said they were considering options including possible investment in operations in the United States as the metals tariffs came into force.

Canada’s Algoma Steel paused exports of steel from Canada to the United States, and its CEO Michael Garcia called the tariffs “very concerning.”

‘CONFUSING, INSCRUTABLE’

Speaking on French television hours before the aluminium tariffs came into force, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury warned of a trade “conflagration” as the world descends into tit-for-tat measures.

“Some of my suppliers can be affected and we are starting to see some disruption,” he said, adding, “We are in a trade war and when a trade war begins, it tends to sustain itself and feed itself.”

So far the aerospace industry has not seen a significant direct impact but many of its suppliers are in Mexico, Canada and China, which have been targeted by earlier duties or tariff warnings.

It can feel like there isn’t much that Democrats and Republicans agree upon these days. The political gridlock makes it tough for either side to make important changes, like finding a way to address Social Security’s looming insolvency. That’s worrisome if you depend heavily on your benefits. Right now, all we know is that Social Security will look different in a decade. What that means is anyone’s guess.

Among individual citizens, though, finding agreement hasn’t been as difficult. A recent National Association of Social Insurance (NASI) survey found that members of both political camps — and Independents, too — would be happy with the following two Social Security-sustaining changes.

1. Increasing or eliminating the Social Security payroll tax cap

Currently, you only pay Social Security payroll taxes — 12.4% split evenly between employee and employer — on the first $176,100 you earn this year. This cap receives an annual adjustment for inflation. It’s high enough that the majority of Americans pay these taxes on all of their income. But that’s not true for the wealthy.

Many of America’s millionaires and billionaires only pay Social Security taxes on a fraction of their income. That doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, especially since Social Security is in dire need of funding. Without changes, the program will face benefit cuts in less than a decade.

The NASI survey looked at two Social Security proposals concerning the payroll tax cap: raising it to $400,000 or eliminating it entirely. Both would cause the wealthy to pay considerably more into the program, though research suggests that neither solution would be enough to completely eliminate the program’s funding shortfall.

The survey found that Democrats, Republicans and Independents viewed these proposals favorably. Democrats were slightly more likely than Republicans to favor these moves. But the difference was only a few percentage points.

Some in government have floated versions of this idea in the past, but none have gained any traction. It’s a strategy that’s likely to continue to come up as the government seeks a bipartisan solution to Social Security’s funding crisis.

2. Raising the Social Security payroll tax rate slightly

The government will likely have to raise the Social Security payroll tax rate to increase the program’s funding. The latest Social Security Trustees Report suggests an increase of more than 4 percentage points could be necessary if the government delays taking action. But a smaller increase could work if paired with other solutions, like increasing the payroll tax cap.

The NASI survey looked at a modest tax increase — just 2 percentage points. Since employees and employers split the tax, this would only raise the average worker’s taxes by 1 percentage point. For someone earning $50,000 per year, that would be an extra $42 per month.

Though no tax increase would be ideal, the idea of a small increase appears agreeable to most Americans. Here, too, Democrats showed a stronger tendency to favor this proposal, but more than half the Republicans surveyed also suggested they would favor this change.

Only time will tell

There’s no indication the government plans to make any long-term Social Security reforms in the near future. That decision will likely happen months, if not years, from now. In the meantime, if you feel strongly about how the government should approach this issue, reach out to your Congressional representatives to make your feelings known.

If you receive more Social Security benefits than you are owed, you may face a 100% default withholding rate from your monthly checks once a new policy goes into effect.

The change announced last week by the Social Security Administration marks a reversal from a 10% default withholding rate that was put in place last year after some beneficiaries received letters demanding immediate repayments for sums that were sometimes tens of thousands of dollars.

The discrepancy — called overpayments — happens when Social Security beneficiaries receive more money than they are owed.

The erroneous payment amounts may occur when beneficiaries fail to report to the Social Security Administration changes in their circumstances that may affect their benefits, according to a 2024 Congressional Research Service report. Overpayments can also happen if the agency does not process the information promptly or due to errors in the way data was entered, how a policy was applied or in the administrative process, according to the report.

New overpayment policy goes into effect March 27