I remember when the first people began to draw a pittance from social security...about 1942, 43. The act was initiated about 1935 and guess what.......the Republicans screamed that it would cost jobs. They continued to scream until the act went to the supreme court twice before it was finally ruled constitutional. Republicans would like to see the poverty stricken back on county poor farms(poorhouses) A couple of acres and a basically empty house where a group of poverty stricken people lived and those who could still amble about would raise and can enough food to feed all of them. This country is lightly sprinkled with unmarked graves from those days.
Social Security is the only program in Washington that month end and month out pays it's own way.
I wish you people had a clue. I wish you could have seen west Tennessee during the depression. Unemployment reached nearly 50%. Grown men cried because they were unable to put food on the table for their families. Men would scrounge around looking for a days work on farms, 12 hours in the fields for $0.75 and their mid day meal. My dad worked in a box factory and ruptured himself lifting loads from a skid and the second day he missed they replaced him. There were no unions, no benefits, no vacation, personal leave, health insurance, workman's comp, etc. If a man could work he was paid...if he couldn't he wasn't.
When my dad got a job as timekeeper on the WPA that was the first regular paycheck he ever drew. He made about $6.50 a week. Believe it or not that was enough to feed us and afford a place to live. He would be sure that my mom kept a pot of navy beans warming on the stove so beggers who knocked on the door knowing we had no work for them could at least have a bowl of beans and a stick of corn bread.
You folks need to get your shit together and your minds right.
And you need to stop living in the past.
The Keynesian model of using government jobs to make up for shortcomings in the private sector was destroyed when public sector unions insisted that these jobs pay a lot more than the prevailing wage and the people doing them weren't going to be held to any kind of standard.
At that point, government jobs became wasteful.
None of which has anything to do with Social Security. Social Security was introduced at a time when the average lifespan was 62 years, so it was no great deal to pay off the people who it 65.
Today the average lifespan is 78, and if you retire at 65, you'll get back everything you paid into it by 72.
And the absolute insanity of pretending it's a retirement fund when it really isn't is the problem.