[zandtar]

Or better yet, eliminate it entirely. Sure we'd have a generation having to bite the bullet, but in the long run it would make the nation stronger. Besides, anyone who worked their entire life and was "counting" on social security to live upon is a fool. In it's present state, with the Baby Boomers hitting that age, and going to keep on hitting it in the years to come, they're selfishly putting the hammer to their own children to support a program that should have been eliminated years ago. As the working population decreases and the social security collectors increase, what's going to happen? Their own kids will get stuck paying more into it to support these people who made poor financial decisions during their life. Since Congress doesn't put it in a seperate fund, rather into the general fund, what you pay isn't protected.

A less painful alternative would be to start imposing income restrictions on collecting benefits. But that would be similar to a Democrat class-warefare strategy. Better just to eliminated it, and bite the bullet.

[VietVet]

Eliminate Social Security? Politically impossible, at the moment.

But Social Security will start eliminating itself about the time I retire, and the payments into it become less than benefit payments out. When that happens, the benefits will have to be paid out of the General Fund (i.e. income taxes, customs, excise taxes and other revenues). Either those benefits will have to be reduced, or the payments will be made in essentially worthless inflated money (which will also reduce the benefits, but the government will hope that no-one notices). At that point in time, it may be possible to persuade the govenment to offer the option of the retiree receiving a lump sum payment, equal to the amount he/she had deducted as FICA taxes over the course of his working life. That would end the system as it exists, with minimum disruption.