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sorry to offend the Paulophiles ... but his response is long winded and typical political speech ...

bottom line with socialist insecurity is that the "old age insurance" program is and has been actuarially out of balance.

i.e. most of the money that goes in pays current retirees ... because people since the late 30s have been getting out more than they paid in plus interest and inflation ... otherwise known as a ponzi/pyramid scheme

e.g. today the average retiree lives to 76/77 but has collected their fare share by about 71 (fair share = everything they put in plus interest and inflation).

Problem is no politician has the guts to talk about putting the system into actuarial balance (i.e. RAISING THE RETIREMENT age ... bumping it up a year every 2/3 years until it gets into actuarial balance .. which today would be about 72/73 ...

about the problem gets worse with the baby boom generation ... who yes paid more into the system ... but their age expectation is expected to rise to the mid 80s.

So, our politician have only addressed the actuarial issue (raising the age) once ... the raising to 67 in the future ... which is too little too late ...

instead the FICA portion of socialist insecurity has gone from I believe initially .5% to 6.2% ...

ANY POLITICIAN ... including Ron Paul ... who is not willing to come out and say the retirement age for the program is the main problem ... is looking out for one thing ... GETTING RE-ELECTED ... becase the AARP is the most powerful DC lobby in the country.!

ANY POLITICIAN ... including Ron Paul ... who is not willing to come out and say the retirement age for the program is the main problem

Any person who thinks that the scam isn't big enough doesn't understand the real problem.

The government isn't an insurance company. The scheme is just socialism.

The people who support it are evil and/or stupid. The people who think government has a legitimate reason to take people's retirement savings for their own good have no clue about the legitimate function of government in a free society. They are some times called liberals.

"Problem is no politician has the guts to talk about putting the system into actuarial balance "

Thats not the problem. The problem is Social Security IS NOT FAIR. To be fair everyone should be given exactly what they have put in over their lives and be allowed to do anything they want with it.

If your actuarial tables say no one gets any money till they are 72, is it fair to make people who die before that pay for people who live longer? Why do only the long lived win the lottery. If you want to do it that way we should insist that those who are overweight or who smoke or have a family history of heart disease and therefor won't live long enough to collect should get a monthly allowance while they are still alive from those who will live long enough.

THAT WOULD BE FAIR

PS. quit talking about interest and inflation. There is no such thing when discussing SS. No funds are earning interest, and no inflation adjustments will be made that are not politically motivated. Inflation adjustments are no more automatic than a political election. As the votes go so goes inflation adjustments. Heck, SS could disappear entirely tomorrow. We would be better off if it did.

ANY POLITICIAN ... including Ron Paul ... who is not willing to come out and say the retirement age for the program is the main problem ... is looking out for one thing ... GETTING RE-ELECTED ... becase the AARP is the most powerful DC lobby in the country.!

From his column:

"If the administration truly wants to give people more control over their retirement dollars, why not simply reduce payroll taxes and let them keep their own money to invest privately as they see fit?"

As is plainly obviousl from the above, the man's not going to be winning any points with the AARP any time soon.

Ron Paul is the only person in Congress who speaks the truth about this abomination. If it were run honestly (and that's assuming that the federal government has any business running it at all, which it doesn't), then retirement age would be a simple matter of policy, not a matter of solvency. In other words, it wouldn't matter from a bookkeeping perspective what the retirement age is, because it would simply be money that's kept in account for the person who paid the money into it. But since it's not being run honestly, playing around with retirement ages is only going to be a bandaid - and a highly unfair one at that.