Should a 40 year old who has paid into it for 24 years and already isn't eligible until age 67 (maybe older?) get screwed out it before the 85 year-old worth $5 million who has been collecting it for 20 years?
Right there ... you turned discussion of changes to social security into an attack. Until that stops - by all concerned - no worthwhile change will take place.
The solution to the impending social security bankruptcy is to move citizens off a government-financed retirement system and into a privately-funded and paid system. The United States simply cannot pretend that the current approach will work and will not result in bankruptcy, for two reasons.
First, the system is now funded on what current employees are paying into the social security program. But the labor force is shrinking and fewer employees are therefore paying into the system:
Second, Americans are living longer with every passing generation:
These numbers are not "talking points," or shill-liners from a political hack; they are the simple facts. A system that relies on pay-as-you-go, with fewer and fewer paying in, more and more drawing out, and those drawing out doing so for a longer time will go bankrupt.
The solutions are basically what George W. Bush proposed:
- Privatize for younger employees.
- Remove those employees from the "drawing from the pool" group.
- Sorry, but then wait for the "drawing out" pool to die off.
- Have retirement funded by what we pay in ourselves.
No other change works. Increasing retirement age will be overcome by the declining labor pool. Making the program "means tested" is almost certainly unconstitutional, under what is called the "Contracts Clause" under Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution: "No State shall ... pass any Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts." Courts read this as restricting the rights solely of governments to unilaterally alter their contractual obligations.
Under the Contracts Clause, if I enter into an agreement with the government, and I perform my part of the contract, the government may not pass a law impairing its obligation under the same contract. That would prevent the government from taking billions of dollars from citizens on the promise that the money would be then returned to them in retirement income, only then to tell hundreds of thousands of those citizens, "Tough titties - you'll get nothing and like it."
How do we fund social security while the beneficiaries die off? The government has a surplus, but is spending the money on other freebies. Just stop that process - that simple. Let the social security revenue pay the benefits until the beneficiaries die off. Have those revenues for younger workers put into private retirement accounts, with no obligation on the party of the government to pay retirees. That is how it should work.
And to fund the shortfall between employee contributions and benefits paid, circa 2030, how about this? How about the entity which @#$%ed up the system so royally sell some of the **** it owns to make up the difference???
In an analogy, if a multi-billionaire faced a coming income shortfall, and was looking at the obligation exceeding revenue by "x" billion dollars per year, would we be willing to manipulate the law, and his payment obligation, so that he can meet his obligation ... while at the same time letting him keep $1 trillion in real estate? Seriously, ask yourself that question.
So, Uncle, how about selling off a tiny portion of your multi-trillion dollar real estate holdings to fund the repair of the @#$%-up you caused? Why should this stupid Uncle get to keep his **** and not pay for his mistakes??
