I haven’t noticed anyone mentioning the bait and switch that was used to pass social security. It was challenged in the Supreme Court shortly after passage because the Federal government has no authority to create a retirement plan. The Supreme Court then declared that the social security contributions of workers was a “tax” as the government did have the authority to impose taxes. Hence the funds stayed in the “general fund” and were accessible to Congress and spent. There aren’t even any IOU’s because there was never a social security fund in the first place.
This is the same bait and switch that was used on the Obamacare mandate. The Supreme Court said that the federal government has no authority to force anyone to buy a product, therefore it was not a “penalty” but a “tax”.
It’s not just that an individual could do better with investing the money than the government did, it’s that the money was never invested, it was spent to buy votes.
Another factor to consider is that it used to be a good idea to have children to help provide/care for you in your old age. With the introduction of SS, that incentive to reproduce was eliminated. For parents, the incentive to ensure that their children were well educated and successful was eliminated.
The saddest thing is that all of the people who chose to not reproduce or to have fewer children did not save the dollars not spent on child-rearing for their retirement, because the children of the inferior “breeders” would be there to support them.
There is never anything good that comes from outsourcing your personal responsibility to the government. It was a ponzi scheme from the outset and the people implementing it knew it. And, we baby boomers didn’t realize how we were being scammed and didn’t do anything to correct it during our peak earning years.