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The Boomers have actually paid all their lives...at an increasing percentage of income...the people who didn’t pay or didn’t pay proportionally are the parents or grandparents of the Boomers, who have had much better retirements than any Boomer can ever expect.

However, the point is that SS was meant to be a floor to keep the elderly from utter destitution. It doesn’t pay much now, but for some people, it’s probably very necessary. People who work at low-income jobs (which describes a lot of people, although apparently FReepers don’t believe this or believe that low-income people are just faking it) often did not get any retirement program and definitely didn’t have enough to save.

BUT you have to have higher income people contributing the same or greater amounts (as they raised the cut-off point) in order to make it work, and those people also have to be able to collect, or otherwise it’s expropriation of income and they’ll find a way of not contributing.

Keeping SS as a floor is fine. People who have more money and don’t need it can always refuse it or send it to their favorite charity. Others who marginally need it can adapt their lives to it...and you can work and make certain amounts of money in addition, so as long as they can do this, that’s fine. It wasn’t meant to give you a luxurious retirement, but one where you weren’t desperate, and I think it has done that.

The big problem, however, is that the Federal government has been getting huge amounts of money and absolutely pillaging the fund and squandering the money. That’s where the problem lies.

The big problem, however, is that the Federal government has been getting huge amounts of money and absolutely pillaging the fund and squandering the money. That’s where the problem lies.

From the Article: "#19 In 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States."

I think that's the real problem, and that doesn't have anything to do with Congress raiding the "trust fund".

The problem is that Social Security was a short-sighted and ill-conceived plan from the very beginning. It was based on the assumption that the demographic makeup that existed in the 1930s would continue in perpetuity. That assumption was proven wrong decades ago, but nothing was ever done about it.

If we absolutely had to, I suppose we (both born in ‘47 and now drawing SS) could live on Social Security. Probably have to live in “Senior Housing” or in a mother-in-law apartment somehow. Fortunately things worked out better than that for us, partly due to luck but mostly due to hard work, good planning and delaying gratification, the later of which is a foreign concept to young people these days by and large.

“However, the point is that SS was meant to be a floor to keep the elderly from utter destitution”.

Only partially true! That was the stated purpose, but it was set up as a ponzi scheme from the beginning.All you have to do is look at the retirement age and the life expectancy at the time. Most people never lived to collect!!!

Yes, you are correct and we have also paid for every welfare baby, every drug addict treatment, every housing program, medicade for anyone who stumbles across the border, every police action for the last 50 years, international aid and on and on and on and on.... ad infinitum. We also paid for people to retire at least two decades too early. Sooner than we could ever afford because a bunch of damn fool politicians who don’t care allowed it in spite of actuaries telling them it was impossible. Our parents and grandparents enjoy(ed) a retirement most of us will never know. The problem has been know for decades as someone pointed out. Politicians won’t face the problem and so the only conclusion is FAILURE of the whole financial system. We will see the largest abused geriatric population the world has ever known. Life expectancy even now is falling in the U.S. Medical care is just too expensive and more technology has not become equivalent to better care.

#24 More than 30 percent of all investors in the United States that are currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k plans invested in equities. So what is going to happen to them if the stock market crashes?

And where else would you invest? Bonds?

The stock market WILL crash, it already has and the growth is negative. Only the money changers are prospering.