Puck

I, too, am more than 25 years away from taking SS (at 68, so I have 27 years to be exact). But I'm fully expecting it. For one thing, I don't see the government being able to yank SS away from those of us who are more than halfway there. There's the question of fitness to afford retirement. *I* -- and you, and many others like us -- have worked half or more than half of our careers with the expectation that SS would be part of our retirement. That's how we saved, planned, and spent. Our generation was raised NOT with the notion that "SS won't be there for you, so you'd better save every penny", but with the notion that "If you want more than the bare minimum existence SS provides, you'd better save something, and how much depends on how much more you want out of life." There's a HUGE difference between those two points of view.

Also, I won't say it's "too late" for us to save, but I think it's too late for us to save what would be required to totally support ourselves -- without SS -- in retirement. If the government should propose it, you will hear the howls of outrage from everyone over, say, the age of 30. That's a lot of voters.

Further, there is at least one very simple fix which would at the very least put off the day of reckoning, and that's eliminating the income cap. Do that one little thing, and those of us in our 40s, and perhaps in our 30s, should have no fear of not living long enough to see our first SS checks -- and once we see the first, they really have no choice but to keep funding it, otherwise they'd be dumping all us poor old people out in the cold, starving, homeless, pathetic, (add more adjectives as needed).

Besides, it is axiomatic in public administration, that once you give the people a benefit (like SS, or Medicare) it quickly becomes a "right" in their minds. Once it's a right, you can't take it away. Tell me -- what's the argument that you think would work, which would eliminate SS for any worker, of any age, today. I think even if the government said, "We'd have to disband our armies and close down Homeland Security, if we keep paying you SS," we'd still scream that they need to find a way to fund SS AND the other things, too! -- after all, Europe does it, and they even fund MORE benefits than we have, and they're doing just fine, thank you very much.

Even if you could possibly pass a bill that would cut off, say, every 19 year old and younger from taking SS benefits, they are still going to have to PAY for the Ponzi scheme that is SS, and they would howl with outrage that they have to pay for something they will never enjoy. Wonder how that will play out in front of the Supreme Court?

In short, we're in a government-run Ponzi scheme, and while most Ponzi schemes eventually collapse under their own weight, the transparency and oversight of our National Ponzi Scheme practically guarantees it MUST be supported, come hell or high water. You can't cut off the young from benefits, without freeing them from the obligation to pay (I believe that's what any SCOTUS decision would come down to) -- but you can't do that, because you wouldn't have the money to pay current benefits. The wheels on the bus go round and round.....

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"Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool." -- Seneca