It is actually worse than that. SCOTUS ruled in Flemming v. Nestor that we have no “right” to SS benefits and that Congress could repeal the Act altogether.
The SCOTUS makes no mention of what the consequences of repealing the Act might be. I think it would make all the protests in the Middle East look like a church social.
Sad, but true. That's why they are called, "benefits".
Eventually 'benefits' grow up to be entitlements in the minds of the recipients, but it has been proven way too many times before -- what the government bestows, the government can take away, and polticians' promises are worth the smoke they are written on.
A government that feels justified in taking one person's wealth to benefit another will have no reservations about taking anyone's wealth to benefit itself.
And that government can always justify to itself the withholding of what it has promised if it believes it has a need of its own.
The SCOTUS makes no mention of what the consequences of repealing the Act might be. I think it would make all the protests in the Middle East look like a church social.
Maybe even enough unrest to suspend elections . . . ?
And they may well do it like they did to the Military. For decades we were promised free healthcare for life for ourselves and our spouse, if we would give Uncle Sugar 20 years of our lives. Before I retired (with 24 years) in 1998, they had stopped providing the "entitlement" that we had fulfilled our part of the contract for.
Beware - as it has been said; "A government powerful enough to give you everything you need is powerful enough to take everything you have".
If only.
The deprived elderly will submit meekly. The working stiffs will keep working and paying their taxes, hoping they'll be eaten last, while being vampirized first.
Impersonal
You still pay impersonal
your taxes, don't impersonal
you?
One can only hope.
I think it is more than coincidence that there are uprising all over the ME and here at home the unions have gone on a tear with demonstrations and threats. There seems to be a general movement toward creating chaos in order to justify more government control. In the ME we are overthrowing tyrants but they were tyrants who kept a lid on on the Islamists. Now, under the guise of democracy, the Islamists will have the upper hand.
In this country the SEIU and the UAW are trying to expand union membership, which has been on decline for the last fifty years, through threats and government coercion.
Things seem to be coming to a boil everywhere.