The Barbarian
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2011
- Messages
- 1,265
- Reaction score
- 277
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
As I understand it, Social Security isnt a pay it forward system. This generation is paying for the SS for the last generation. The concern is that the tipping point has passed and that there arent enough people earning income today to pay for the retiree promises already made.
The only problem I have with what you are saying is ... why is it underfunded now? SS was established in the 40's …. if I remember right .. it's either this year .. or next .. .that will be the first year that it has taken in less then it's paying out. Thats .. what 70 years of surpluses that have just disappeared. In my opinion that is our government stealing or cheating it's citizens in a big way.
If this was any private business, and it was their retirement fund, we would be screaming for heads to roll, people to be jailed, and whatever else you can think of. Yet this is on a much larger scale and will impact literally every person that has ever worked, or is presently working.
In my opinion this is where we the people have failed ourselves, we have allowed our government to go on a spending spree for years and years, consider this, our best fiscal period (recently) was during the Clinton years, yet even during those years, we added 1.5 trillion dollars to our debt. Simply put during our best time in modern history, we spend 176 billion dollars a year more then what we took in. again in my opinion, thats a sad state of affairs when we can look back over the last 30 to 40 years and say during the best of times we lost 176 billion dollars a year.