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Ok, you said "you really can't cut outlays" then went on to describe 2 plans that are purported to "control costs"; nowhere do you mention increasing the money paid into the fund.

Bottom line, you're saying what SS and MC pays out needs to be reduced.

I'm simply saying that SS is already too small to live on - I mean really, how low would the government like to go ? I can make it actuarily very profitable easily: just make the retirement age 95. Or perhaps make the maximum monthly retirement benefit $100.

How about this: What is SS / MC ? A pile of Treasury paper asserting a claim on future tax revenue of a profligate government, and a system that withholds from every employee's paycheck and pays out benefits to retirees.

If we stopped paying ALL SS / MC payments, completely ended the programs, but left the withholding in place, the first year would produce a bit of a surplus based on current total Federal Revenue; perhaps $100 billion or so, give or take.

Guess what Congress would do then. Spend even more (issue more bonds) and rack up another trillion in annual deficit. Why would they borrow ? Because they can. And they want to keep sloshing money around to garner votes; that's the easy way to stay elected.

At this point, it's just a "clash of consituencies". Which groups will win out with > 50% of Congressional votes. HHS, FTC, HUD, Welfare, Transportation, Senior Citizens, green energy, whatever.

What's really rich is that Congress would undoubtedly have the gall to keep the withholding line on everyone's paycheck labeled SS/ MC ! Because the mass media would not do a PR campaign to gin up political opposition - no one in positions of power would care either way. Just tell everyone it's for runout costs or something.

As far as a "dumb" electorate and people who are too "dumb" to save, there is a subtle difference between blaming them and not. There is a difference between individual responsibility and societal responsibility. And nothing makes it more clear than mass marketing, i.e., the ability to sway the opinions of "the masses". This is done by leaders of society; even going back to pre-printing press times, the monarch had the machinery of government and leaders in society to spread a story. Also, those who were in powerful positions in society, if they thought it best to oppose the monarch, could try their hand at swaying public opinion with their own stories spread with their own story-spreading machinery, i.e., leaders in towns, other nobles, etc.

Of course, in our day, such machinery is more powerful than ever in history, and, as always, supports contending viewpoints in all the various types of media. The education establishment engraines things into people's minds that remain firmer than ever 70 years later. Government and big business push all sorts of ideas which are designed to separate the unsuspecting from their money.

The smoking debate is a classic case: years ago cigarettes were pushed in such a complex and powerful way that people themselves took cigarette smoking to be "their own". While we can fault the individual smoker - what if this concerted PR campaign never happened ? The cigarette marketer takes credit for boosting sales; they readily acknowledge that they had a hand in convincing millions of people to smoke.

Now, scarcely a few decades later, the PR campaign is the exact opposite. Millions of people are losing out on the pleasure of a good smoke, abandoning cigarettes, due to the efforts of the marketer.

Marketing works.

The King, the President, Congress, CEO's - all leaders of society, can lay out a vision, a plan, an idea, and get the thing put into motion with the means at their disposal. Kennedy said "man on the moon" and bingo, everyone gets behind him. Leaders in the American colonies started the American Revolution and a new nation. From the FDR libary at Marist:

"As Governor of New York State FDR enacted a law to provide old-age pensions and was ready to extend it nationally. By Executive Order, Roosevelt created the Committee on Economic Security and their recommendations provided the basis for Congress' 1935 Social Security Act."

If the "big idea" turns out to be a winner in the long run - give the leader(s) who initiated it the credit they deserve.

But if it turns out to be unworkable in the long run - do we blame all the people who... were forced by their government at the time to participate in the idea ? Every world leader who brings calamity on his nation blames the citizenry for his mistakes.

Why did everyone vote in FDR ? Hey, wait a minute. All of my grandparents voted AGAINST FDR. Everyone at the time was talking about SS; old folks started receiving benefits. My parents heard about it from the time they were small children. Look at the checks those old people get - you'll have one too. I guess as 10-year olds they should have resisted having these thoughts ingrained into their minds because it's a ponzi scheme. All the politicians, coworkers, family, newspapers, old people reliably getting their SS checks for all those decades, that "greatest generation" should have been more suspect of all those influences and assumed that they would get little or nothing out of SS. And many of them did. But, as is always the case with marketing, you don't get 100% response, but you will always get some response. There were some people who always had the idea, subconsciously if nothing else, that they had SS as a fallback, just in case. They could subsist on SS if they had to.

The sin of these types of programs is that they always induce some portion of the population to not save and invest. And leaders that know that are wrong for instituting what they know to be a bad program in order to pander for votes. And those leaders that don't know that should because they have the responsibility to as leaders.

Both bear responsibility, the government and the non-savers. The non-savers will pay a dear price for being misled into relying on the government. The government, however, can not avoid it's own share of the blame by pretending that it had nothing to do with the program, any more than Bernie Madoff can place all the blame on his investors for being so stupid. We don't absolve Bernie and blame only his investors; and we must remember that SS withholdings are confiscated by the government, while Bernie's investors made a choice to invest with his firm.

IMHO.

Bottom line, you're saying what SS and MC pays out needs to be reduced.

The bottomline is that you have two options or a combination of them. Reduce benefits and raise revenues.

I'm simply saying that SS is already too small to live on - I mean really, how low would the government like to go ? I can make it actuarily very profitable easily: just make the retirement age 95. Or perhaps make the maximum monthly retirement benefit $100.

SS is not meant to live on. The question is how much are people willing to pay to get higher benefits?

If we stopped paying ALL SS / MC payments, completely ended the programs, but left the withholding in place, the first year would produce a bit of a surplus based on current total Federal Revenue; perhaps $100 billion or so, give or take.

Check out my pie charts in post #22. The revenue raised by the payroll tax in FY2010 was $865 billion. The amount of SS expenditures was $707 billion. According to the Trustees Report Medicare expenditures are about $550 billion. So we spend $1.2 trillion and take in $865 billion.

Both bear responsibility, the government and the non-savers. The non-savers will pay a dear price for being misled into relying on the government. The government, however, can not avoid it's own share of the blame by pretending that it had nothing to do with the program, any more than Bernie Madoff can place all the blame on his investors for being so stupid.

The government is us, We the People. We elect and pay for the government. We are responsible, not the so-called leaders who we vote in office over and over again. It is our job to hold them accountable. Have a good day.