“That may be the most liberal thing I have heard on FR in several months. Congratuations. I hope your Occupy thingy is going well too.”
Truth hurts. ‘Social security reform’, entails grandfathering everyone, but making sure that new hires get nothing. We’ll be paying for everything, and even if it can’t be paid for, they’ll borrow and borrow and borrow. Who cares?
You aren’t going to be around to have to pay it back...
I'm a great-grandpa. I have been paying into Social Security since I was 14. Just give me back the money I put in and some employers contributed along the way, it's a tidy six figure sum. Just the principle. I won't live to see it, and I'm still working.
Now which of you wants to come out here and be responsible for $100,000,000.00 worth of projects a year, spend half or more of your days away from home every year, go days with sometimes three or four hours of sleep, work all hours or be on call, 24/7 until the job is done, away from family and friends, on location? Don't bother making long range plans, because that'll be when things happen. I haven't had a vacation nor a sick day in over 20 years. Benefits come out of pocket, because I'm a consultant.
(And then there are years when activity stops, and you live off your savings and what you can scratch together from odd jobs. Try wintering in North Dakota with no running water, skinning your own dinner, heating/cooking with wood, and using an outhouse.)
There are fewer than 10,000 people on the planet who do what I do for a living. I've paid my dues, adapted to sweeping technological changes, worked the sh*t jobs no one else could do or wanted to do, and I have earned (over more than three decades in this profession) the opportunity to keep doing it only so long as I do it well.
If you can keep up, you might be able to have the job you seem to think I have 'stolen' from you.