The last stats I read on it, almost a third of social security recipients are much younger than Age 62. And of the elderly, a full one third depend 90 to 100% on social security as their only income and half depend on it as their primary source of income.
Nobody, not even the most cruel Republican, thinks that we can just stop social security without causing unspeakable suffering for millions of Americans that we have encouraged to be dependent on it.
But we can say STOP. Stop piling more and more entitlements onto the system. Stop encouraging young people to become dependent on it by putting together a way that we can start with tiny percentages to privatize the system and gradually wean people off of it. Once people see how much better off they are with private retirement accounts, it won't be hard to gradually move the system that direction.
The social security system as it current exists and as it is currently administrated is unsustainable. Congress will continue to raid it to avoid having to make hard choices in other areas. It will continue to earn no dividends or even simple interest. And the money is not ours. Congress could stop it tomorrow and we would have no more recourse re what we have paid in than we have in how they use our income taxes. We can't will it to our heirs. And if we aren't lucky enough to live to retirement age, we won't collect any of what we paid in.
If Congress had set out to devise the most inefficient, costly, and unsustainable system possible, they would have come up with something approximately the current Social Security system.
Nobody, not even the most cruel Republican, thinks that we can just stop social security without causing unspeakable suffering for millions of Americans that we have encouraged to be dependent on it.
But we can say STOP. Stop piling more and more entitlements onto the system. Stop encouraging young people to become dependent on it by putting together a way that we can start with tiny percentages to privatize the system and gradually wean people off of it. Once people see how much better off they are with private retirement accounts, it won't be hard to gradually move the system that direction.
The social security system as it current exists and as it is currently administrated is unsustainable. Congress will continue to raid it to avoid having to make hard choices in other areas. It will continue to earn no dividends or even simple interest. And the money is not ours. Congress could stop it tomorrow and we would have no more recourse re what we have paid in than we have in how they use our income taxes. We can't will it to our heirs. And if we aren't lucky enough to live to retirement age, we won't collect any of what we paid in.
If Congress had set out to devise the most inefficient, costly, and unsustainable system possible, they would have come up with something approximately the current Social Security system.