It is probably time to admit that Social Security won't work. When it started people weren't living much past 65 or 70 and each generation was figured to be larger than the preceding one. A major flaw was the exemption of state and federal workers along with railroad and many others. The whole deal was probably unconstitutional to start with. I think decreasing benefits 1% a year until the program disappears would be an equitable way to gently get rid of the program. Drawing a payment funded by our children is not a right if they get the political muscle to cancel it. We did not pay for ours. We payed for the previous generation.
Agree.
The reason they picked 65 in the '30s is that that was the age of the Railroad Retirement Act on 1920. The Railroad guys picked 65 because almost nobody lived that long. It was intended to protect the very few people who got too old to work. There was not supposed to be any such thing as "retirement."
Now we have a 30-year long paid vacation and it's going broke.
in 1983 they recognized people were living longer and raised the age, in increments to 67, or 70 if you wanted a fuller payment. Nobody complained because it exempted anyone over about 40, and the 40-yfear-olds were too stupid to know they were getting the short end of the stick. Too far in the future.
If they had just indexed the age for full benefits to life expectancy, it would probably be about 75 now and the system would not be running out of money. I'm not complaining personally but some of you younger guys have a problem. I worry about the future of my country.
