Unfortunately SS has become an entitlement used to buy votes for the rats.
Like you, I paid into it for years (and still pay into it at 75). I certainly don’t consider it an entitlement. As a careful but successful investor, I could have used that money to generate a significant return (and as an obsessive saver, I would have.;-)
It has been that way as long as I can remember. Since the 1970s I remember welfare families being convinced that if a Republican got elected, it would be taken away from them.
Unfortunately SS has become an entitlement used to buy votes for the rats.
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The Federal Reserve Bank’s ability to purchase as much debt as the Treasury Dept. needs has been used to finance vote-buying for the Rats. This phenomena is here to stay. All future political parties in the US will do it. The ultimate question is: Whose votes are we buying? Open borders, Woke, Globalists? or Law-abiding, hard-working, decent, US citizens?