[FreedomNotSafety]

Just ask any senior patriot if he is willing to give up Social Security and Medicare in the name of freedom. I have only met a few who said they would do it. The rest have excuses as to why the rest of us should pay their SS benefits. Any class of people who obtain their living via the largesse of the U.S. givernment are unlikely to change the status quo. Unfortunately that is more than half so that Canuk’s prophecy will never happen.

[Vendome]

Are you kiddin?

They paid into SS and rightly deserve their money back.

[Windflier]

Just ask any senior patriot if he is willing to give up Social Security and Medicare in the name of freedom.

If they decline, then they're a senior, but not a patriot. Better patriots than you and I have given the last full measure of sacrifice for their country.

When it comes to our military veterans, that's a different equation. They've earned our everlasting gratitude in gold for what they've done to secure the blessings of liberty for the rest of us. In my mind, we owe them whatever pensions and benefits Congress deems equitable and compensatory.

[gasport]

I accept your kind offer.

I waive any claim to SS/M’care benefits in return for the “contributions” extorted from me for the past 50+ years.

To compensate me for the lost time value of money, I request you deliver a proxy punch in the chops to FDR in the lobby of Hell.

[erkelly]

Your remarks about social security make me feel very sad. The fact is we baby boomers paid more into social security than we shall ever ever get back, and OUR MONEY is not there for us, and so is taken from you. In our youth and middle age, we knew what was being done to us, many of us were determined to try to be in a position where we did not have to take social security because of this, plus we had the consolation that we were truly helping our parents who got far more out of social security than they paid in, and we did not resent it as much as you so obviously do.

Once upon a time. we did elect the Newt Gingrich congress who did much to reform social security and put it on a sound fiscal footing, but thanks to the ruinous spending of the democrats and this massive immigration of unskilled illegal aliens pushing up the amount of transfer payments hugely it is gone. It is a sad sad situation. When I was young, pensions were common, in fact they were vested. You were promised that no matter what, you would have this pension, and then for most of us who worked in the private sector, this income we had planned on for our retirement, was all taken away us when we were 40 or so, and facing the fact we were going to have to start over trying to prepare for our retirement, just when our college-bound children needed our incomes the most. Then thanks to the destructive policies of the federal govt, our stocks deperated, interest rates and housing prices fell, prices rose, our annuities we paid so much into just began to disappear, for many of us our wages and hours cut. And then, our grown children, unable to find jobs, began to need our support further depleting what savings we had set aside.

It is so hard to be old, my young friend, after a life time of working, paying high taxes (many of those years taxes were higher than yours by the way.) We have been hurt too, it is so very very hard to be old and sick, knowing what little income you are given comes from young people who have every right to resent you. You are asking so much from the “old” patriots, more than you can imagine, you ask us to be utterly impoverished, utterly dependent on the charity of those who like you resent us so, no longer able work after we have stood on our own two feet for all of our lives, and provided for children as best we could. Many of us old people will probably choose to live destitute, sick, starving, cold, and homeless after a life of toil, to help you, but it is a terrible sacrifice, and you should not resent and hate us so much for fearing this.