Social security is NOT an entitlement for those who have been paying into it for 40 years. Entitlement implies getting something for free......SS is hardley free at 7% of each paycheck.
Honestly, it *is* an entitlement. It certainly isn’t an ‘investment’, as it really returns *less* than inflation. It’s basically an entitlement that the working folks pay to the retired. As was the case before. When you pay the 7% it’s to pay for the currently retired. From that standpoint, I can see how a good number(myself included) would want to break the cycle, ie, not pay for a current entitlement in order to expect their own entitlement later.
Furthermore, in order to break that cycle, I’d be willing to pay for the said entitlement for another 5 years without expecting anything in return in order to get rid of it for the time after the 5 years expired.
By the way, ‘entitlement’ doesn’t imply getting something for free. Entitlement means getting something that someone *else* pays for, because there is no free lunch. And that is EXACTLY what SS is. The fact people have been duped by the govm’t to pay into it for 40 years is something those people should face, and those of us who’d like to *not* pay for it shouldn’t have to.
[sigh]
Does this really have to be explained again? What you and I have been paying “into” is not really a retirement system, and there’s nothing there to collect. SS is just another tax. The money you and I paid into it is gone, already spent as part of the general fund.
It’s true that people have been collecting SS money for years, but that’s just a hook to fool the mass of rubes (the soon-to-start-retiring-in-large-numbers baby boomers). Politicians from an earlier era, many now dead, promised voters that if the voters would just support higher taxes, then yet-unborn generations would pay for everyone’s retirement.
Thing is, those yet-unborn generations didn’t take part in that deal, and they have no obligation to fund it. SS may owe you, and I, vast amounts of money, but, unfortunately, SS doesn’t really exist. It’s an accounting fiction. Might as well claim that the tooth fairy owes you cash for the teeth dropping out of your head.
And, of course, the employer is required to match that 7%, so it is actually 14% per year that goes in. No one but the government could manage a lifetime withholding of 14% per year so badly.