Everyone near retirement (or in retirement) should budget for and assume the 23% or 25% or whatever haircut is going to happen, and a recession will accelerate it, because SocSec tax collection will decline.
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I would be against that because the government hasn’t shown it can run a fiscally responsible program. They are overspending by giving money to people who never or under-contributed, paying people long after they die, etc. I don’t want more of my money flying out the window.
Even considering it an insurance program, any insurance company operating like this would have gone out of business a long time ago. Insurance companies employ actuaries and analysts so there is a math formula relating revenue and payouts. Social security seems a political entitlement disconnected from any math.
Unless/until people embrace the real word, where things don’t fall from the sky, it will continue to be a battle to keep the ponzi scheme alive.
No, the SS benefits will not run out. They will just tax younger people at a higher level to cover the poor, elderly, and those that don’t plan for old age. You see, with this taxation system, success is penalized while failure is rewarded. If everyone was treated equally, there wouldn’t be tax brackets.
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Of course, a certain amount of “success” is achieved by rigging the system, cheating vendors and workers, breaking the law… but you are apparently OK with that because money.
So having lots of money makes someone a better person, and people who “don’t plan” for retirement are inferior. Never mind that there might be some real reasons why they “don’t plan” for retirement. And don’t forget workers who lost their retirement because their pension funds were raided by “successful” people like hedge fund managers… (but you don’t judge them because they are “successful”)
So “successful” (i.e.: Rich) people are better, and people who don’t have retirement plans are to be judged harshly by folks like you as moral, civic, and personal failures. Got it.
(it says a lot more about you than about them…)
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I look at it this way. There will always be a wealth gap. Assuem that poor people are given $1 million dollars each. They are still ‘poor’ compared to the billionaires.
I don’t know why some folks just cannot accept the fact that our capitalist system needs to take some of the profits produced by that system and do a little ongoing maintenance to keep things running smoothly.
There’s a natural individual participant income order that occurs in a free enterprise system. There’s a few folks at the top of that pyramid who pocket lotsa money and make the decisions that keep the thing going, there’s the folks in the middle-income strata that make a comfortable living and there’s lotsa people at the bottom competing for jobs that pay the least amount that is sometimes not enough to provide an income meeting their needs. It’s always been that way and probably always will be that way. It’s how the system works.
To keep the system going we have to address the needs of those participants on the bottom income rungs of the America free enterprise system. It’s in the best interests of the system to keep them around.
If you’re an American in the top half of that income scale, quit crying and pony up a few bucks to keep the system running. It’s the best the world has ever seen, don’t screw it up by being stingy!
Whew!.. now I feel better. 
Tell me how many times you have paid extra on your tax return? That’s what I thought…
Don’t ask me to pay more when so many pay nothing and we waste so much of what is collected.
About the same number of times you have cheated on yours.
We remember the lottery winners who piss away their winnings and end up in debt and worse.
You might find this short essay by Malcom Gladwell about the reasons people remain in poverty interesting and informative.
H200h, Well I started the article until I hit the paywall.
Here’s an another article from a different source:
Gladwell’s book, Outliers, will point out the things that help people become successful. The obvious contrasts between the the two themes should help form a reasonable basis of understanding why some people succeed in life while others do not.
You are right. My comment was more towards ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ being relative terms. Their sizes move, enlarge and contract but are not eliminated.
John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’… imagine there is no war, no heaven or hell…
George Burns in ‘Oh God’… Without up there can’t be down, without life you can’t have death…
So even in a Star Trek universe where there supposedly is no money, some people would have larger houses than others, some happier than others. Some people would be in a more enviable postion than others.