“Of course it’s a Ponzi scheme. So what? It’s also the most vital, humane, and fixable of all social programs. The question for the candidates is: Forget Ponzi — are you going to fix Social Security?”
Excellent question, especially for those who have paid into it for 35 or forty years at gunpoint, not out of greed, which of course, is the point of the article. This is far worse than a Ponzi scheme.
The headline is enough to make you pretty angry. I first thought it meant he was saying so what, like it was no big deal. You can’t read his stuff lightly, can you? The mandatory component of this is what really should make people riot, with ZeroCare on the way. It compounds the Ponzi felony. We weren’t enticed by profits, we were robbed at gunpoint. Just as we will be with ZeroCare.
There's no way to fix SS and it isn't humane at all. It is just a thin veil thrown over the confiscation of a large part of America's retirement savings. SS will have to be abolished (probably in several stages) along with the payroll tax and replaced with an honest welfare/income support program for the elderly financed out of the general fund. No government can keep a promise to care for everyone. It's civilizational suicide.
If you can get your hands on an old copy of William F. Buckey's Up From Liberalism (1959), you'll get a surprise. Near the end of the book, after examining the issue, he concludes with the same proposition that you offered.
Only back then, there was no ZeroCare and entitlement crisis to gird people. Barry Goldwater tried that approach in 1964, and in so doing got burned.