[Will88]

You aren’t sure what period is being looked at...over the next two decades,

The trillions of unfunded liabilities in Figure II are calculated over some number of future years, but I haven't spotted where that information is given, if it is in the discussion. It be good to know how many years out they calculated. It might go out until all those currently in the system reach retirement age. - All your rambling does not answer that.

Like many on the left and right, you live in your own little fantasy world. Gripe all you care to, but nothing will change the fact that some form is safety net is needed for those of working age, and some form of assured retirement income is needed for the retirement age citizens. And a fair number who thought they were just as savvy as you think you are saw their comfortable retirement nest eggs cut in half or worse during 2007 - 2009. Like it or not, there needs to be some amount of assured retirement income. Otherwise, we'd have varying degrees of anarchy and all sorts of social ills few Americans would care to have as part of the daily scenery.

Your ideal society where everyone provides for their own retirement voluntarily will come about at the same time as peace and love exists among all mankind and the lion will lie down with the lamb.

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

Point #1 - The $13 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Social Security is based on the fact that around 80 million baby boomers are going to retire of the next two decades (10,000 per day) and the whole pyramid scheme falls apart due to this crushing tsunami, but you keep ignoring the figures due in part to a) your fail ure to understand that Social Security isn't an insurance program, b) the $29 billion shortfall is just the start of the problems, and c) you just skirt over anything that doesn't further your fantasy of "social security is just fine."

Point #2 - Amazingly, you ape the arrogance of Bill O'Reilly by qualifying your statements by pretending to denounce "many on the left and right" and attacking me for living in a "fantasy world" while you have indulged yourself in a fantasy that ignores the reality that the program operates the same way an unsound Ponzi scheme operates and cannot sustain itself. You seem to be positioning yourself fairly left by the way by asserting that Americans must remain dependent on the Government for their needs and brushing aside any challenge to this Collectivist mechanism. People have managed throughout American history to manage their lives (and their old age) without Social Security, Medicare, or welfare ... and a lot of the technology we enjoy today.

Point #3 - A bald assertion that people need Government mandated retirement isn't evidence and it doesn't bode well for sustained argument when you rely solely on that premise as the end all, be all. Also, you don't have to be savy to open a savings account and use compound interest to make yourself a millionaire by the time you retire even if you are a low wage earner. Investing simply doesn't mean in the stock market either; there are types of investment such as buying property. I don't need to expound on the ways people could invest...it is a person's responsibility to do that themselves.

Point #4 - I was rather amused that you ended by equating a free society absent of a Welfare/Nanny State with frivolous straw men like "peace and love for all mankind." I hate to break this to you, but we had a United States before Social Security and before Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs (based on fabian socialism from Great Britain). We can have a world without Socialism.

Point #5 - The Social Security system, passed in 1935, is not a legitimate, savings-investment, insurance program. Taxes are not invested into real, income-earning assets. There is no trust fund but in name only. Americans have no property right in their supposed "contributions." The Social Security system today is a compulsory, redistributive, unconstitutional, pyramid scheme that contains the seeds of its own destuction given the demographics of the next 20 years. Reforming or "tweeking" a corrupt system is not a meaningful option. There is only one true privatization reform of Social Security. There is only one Constitutional solution. There is only one economically and morally sound system. Our nation must begin the difficult but manageable process of dismantling the Social Security system - yes, in total.

"Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program."---Ronald Reagan

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

“Under the creed of modern liberalism, the individual citizen is not called to maturity but is instead invited to begin a second childhood. Like the child at play, he is given, or at least promised, ultimate economic, social and political security without having to assume responsibility for himself. The liberal agenda requires him to remain in an artificial environment—the daycare program of the grandiose state—where he need not become an adult, take responsibility for his own welfare, nor cooperate with others to achieve what the state will give him for nothing.”-—Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D.

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

“Under the creed of modern liberalism, the individual citizen is not called to maturity but is instead invited to begin a second childhood. Like the child at play, he is given, or at least promised, ultimate economic, social and political security without having to assume responsibility for himself. The liberal agenda requires him to remain in an artificial environment—the daycare program of the grandiose state—where he need not become an adult, take responsibility for his own welfare, nor cooperate with others to achieve what the state will give him for nothing.”-—Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D.

[Rome2000]

The Communist Party has made key contributions to the working class struggle of the United States, building industrial unions, organizing for rights on the job and for a social safety net, opposing racism and bigotry and pointing the way toward full political, social and economic equality, upholding democratic rights against the threat of fascism and the far right-wing, and supporting international working class solidarity against imperialist globalization and for peace.

Firmly basing ourselves on Marxism-Leninism, we strive to apply theory to practice, with practice as the test of theory, by being the most consistent fighters for broad-based unity and against all unnecessary divisionsracism, sexism, nationalism, chauvinism, homophobia, and anti-communism. Marxism-Leninism is an ideology that not only explains how society works, it is a guide for how to change the world for the better.-—CPUSA