“Even though employees are required to contribute, there is no right to collect, at least according to SCOTUS.”
Exactly, And when the crap hits the fan then I really wonder if the government will pay out one more dime to SS. There are so many other things they may consider more important. And at that point it will be Martial law anyways. Not much of a chance at that point that there will be any more elections.
Look at the GM bankruptcy - about 800 years of economic law was upended whereby bondholders were stiffed and got nothing. “Normally”, in a bankruptcy, bondholders are senior and get paid first, before anyone else.
My guess is that were things to get really dicey, foreign creditors will/are get paid first. If the problem was just limited to social security, that would be another matter but when taken in aggregate the fiscal problems look pretty bad. Trillion dollar deficits, state and local governments insolvent, manufacturing jobs long ago gutted and shipped offshore, etc etc, it’s a long list of horrors.
Mencken had it right a hundred years ago - “Elections are advance auctions of stolen goods.”