“So you are advocating rewarding the lazy bums with retirement while the people who actually paid into the system get screwed. Thanks a lot.”
First off, it already does. The rules of the system are very highly skewed towards giving a MUCH HIGHER return to people that earn a relatively small amount of money, than people that earn a relatively large amount of money (and yes, I’m accounting for the wage cap)...so you’re already getting taken there.
Second, for the same reason it is skewed, I also don’t want to see old people starving in our streets, which I lot of people here don’t seem to mind.
Third, the MONEY IS GONE. The generations that paid into it already spent it - they spent it as it came in (plus about $12 trillion on top of that). Everyone knows it. They collectively chose to use SS to augment the income tax to fund all of their important projects - like public housing, education, PBS, Vietnam, windmills, putting people on the Moon...etc, without paying the taxes needed for it. I know, not everyone supported everything above, and I’m sure it’s likely that you didn’t support most of them - but collectively, through their elected officials, these generations chose to spend, rather than save their money.
So what happens now. If I have $250,000 in my IRA and Bank of New York Mellon (I get a kick out of their name), for some stupid reason, lets me borrow all of that money to fly around the world for a year, first class - I am OUT OF LUCK for retirement (unless I figure out a way to pay it back), because they sure as heck are not going to ask my neighbor to repay it for me.
So what you’re essentially doing is DEMANDING that my kids and my future grandkids pay for YOUR retirement because your generation chose to spend that money instead of save it. That may be fine with you, but I do have a problem with that. I don’t want my kids paying the price for GORGING of prior generations.
Aha! I knew it! You are no where near retirement.
Here’s the point. SS was/is a program set up to forcibly take money from citizens to replace/augment retirement savings for individuals (because they are too stupid to do it themselves). In between its beginning and now congress spent the money that was supposed to be set aside in the system so that now the SS system is insolvent. This is theft. Congress should be prosecuted for this crime. Then make them repay the money.
I have 3 siblings. My family and 1 sibling and their family has tried to prepare for retirement by savings other than SS. But receiving SS has been included in our retirement prospectus because OUR MONEY WAS TAKEN FOR THIS. In the meantime, the other 2 siblings have not saved a dime. They have bought new cars, etc. (I’ve never had a new car (: ) Why should they be rewarded for not saving while we are penalized FOR SAVING. That is a typical liberal response....means test! Socialism at it’s finest.
Means testing of SS is not a conservative position.
Your