When SS was first instituted the average life expactancy was 62 (women) and 56 (men) [I may be off a couple 0of years- I am going from my mory- but the point is] Social Security kicked in at age 65 - so no one was expected to collect on it, it was a MONEY GRAB
Then when people started living longer, it became a VOTING BLOCK
I feel no sympathy for oldsters who voted themselves their grand-childrens money
Hey! Why dont we just LOAN OURSELVES $10 trillion dollars- payable in the year 3000 (let THEM worry about it)
Actually the life expectancy in 1938 was 58 for white men, and 52 for black men. 62 for women
To keep the ratio correct from 1938, you would have to raise the retirement age to 81 years.
Part of what needs to be done, is that all non investment income should be subject to the tax. Anyone who earns less than the cutoff of $106K pays on every dime. Neither my wife nor I make to the cutoff, and so $180K (combined) is taxed at the full rate. Yet a single earner stops paying at $106. If that single earner had a non-working wife, the benefits would be the same to her.
I am 68 years old and have never had the opportunity to vote on SS. I don't know who the he** you think you are talking about but it isn't anyone who is alive today. Not only that, SS was never voted on, it was implemented by the biggest socialist in history, FDR.
I worked hard when I was younger to try to get SS done away with gradually and turn it into private accounts, so that everyone was paying for themselves not for the people ahead of them. so take your BS crap talk somewhere else, dumbass, or at least learn what you are talking about and quit spouting sh** through your a** hole.
I'm sure this will get me booted from FR, but the truth is you feel this way because you're a clueless asshole from the "me generation". Practicaly nobody alive 'voted for' social security, it was simply taken from their paychecks all their lives with the promise they'll get it back at retirement. And if you had a freakin brain in your head you'd realize that granny and grandpa have helped, and often continue to help, their children and grandchildren, financially and otherwise. In fact they toiled, shed their blood and died so a-holes like you could have a better life, you f---ing nitwit.
As it prophesies in scripture: "But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful to parents, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God;--" (2 Timothy).
Pretty well sums up this lost generation of selfish little twits. Welcome to those times you greedy old folks who slaved all your long lives for your children and their children. This is the return on your hard work, economic downturn and young people turning on you like cannibals to ensure they have enough for themselves. They will abandon you in the hopes they can continue on in their narcissistic little world of filthy attire, text messaging, blue tooth, HDTV and XBoxes.
A little deceptive just looking at the life expectancy of the entire population. You have to remember that childhood death rates were much higher back in the 1930s than today, skewing the 'average' life expectancy lower.
The fact is that if people made it past childhood back in the early years of SS, they had a very high probability of living into their 70s or 80s.
Medical technology has added only marginally to life expectancy at the back end of life since the 1930s, albeit it has made the quality of life for older people better. What it has done is allow far higher percent of the population to survive childhood and make it to old age by eliminating or finding treatments for many diseases that claimed mostly young people.