I certainly would question mine (in future) being cut given the current state of affairs. I sure would oppose Obama cutting it to save himself.
I would never advocate people on SS today, to have their payments reduced. In fact, I believe it would have to be ten years or more prior to retirement, that people would need to be prepared to receive less than what is paid out today.
I would be prepared to alter that a bit if the stats made it clear that wouldn’t work. I still think there is a lot to be gained by allowing people to accumulate their own wealth, instead of the federal government absconding with it and mis-using the funds.
I envision a time when people’s own wealth would cover almost all their medical, and retirement needs.
Catastrophic insurance would cover people in times of severe need.
I would like to see the feds eliminate early taxes on individuals with those funds being diverted to their own savings until they had $10,000 in their account. From there on the feds would go ahead and take on the tax funds.
Once a person had ten thousand on account, they would be covered for all but the most extreme illnesses, the deductible for those capping out at something like $10k.
If a person had accumulated $30-40k, they might opt to increase their medical deductible for reduced monthly payments on the catastrophic insurance.
People saving for their retirement without having to pay in SS, Medicare, and a considerable portion of their present taxes, could save a considerable sum by retirement age.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do believe a system like this could be developed that would work just fine.