We are just as doomed as Europe. Look at SS and Medicare. Grandpa will cut your GD throat the minute you talk about cutting him off the welfare juice. And it IS welfare. Think about that for a moment — even on THIS website!!!, probably half the posters talk about gramps deserving all that cash, because “he worked his whole life and paid into the system.” Never mind that for the last 10,000,000,000 years any “conservative” who could read could go to any one of a billion different sources and find that a huge majority of SS recipients get ALL their contributions back, WITH INTEREST in X amount of years, but live for X plus Y years (and Y is a big number). Welfare plain and simple, and it WILL destroy this country.
And also remember that all the SS money paid in went to the general fund. The original reason was to stop the risk of deflation, but all that money is gone.
To pay the current retirees, workers have to be taxed. The Ponzi scheme will fail soon.