Seems like a start to me, although I’d go further and simply declare Social Security and Medicare to be means-tested WELFARE PROGRAMS once and for all.
After all, they are already welfare programs, in that they are transferring the earnings of one group of people (the workers, and even worse, their kids and grandchildren) to another group of people - those that have already retired.
Now if Al Gore’s Lockbox was still there, things would be different, and they would be funded retirement programs - but things are what they are. So it’s no different than Food Stamps today, except the only requirement for qualify to have access to my kids’ future earnings is age.
That’s not a popular view on FR, but you are absolutely right. A defined benefit program funded by mandatory payroll taxes is just as you say: another form of welfare they’ve used to corrupt the populace into supporting an ever bigger and more intrusive, redistributive government.