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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm unclear how its an "entitlement" when I've been paying into it (SS and Medicare) for 25 years.  Sure let's slash it - but I better get back every penny I put in so I can invest it.[/quote]

The average person gets out, over time, much more than you pay in.

That's why it's (partially) an entitlement. A pay-in entitlement, if you prefer.

Which works fine as long as there's enough young workers to subsidize older ones--hence the need for more legal immigration--, or the whole program implodes like a pyramid scheme.[/quote]

That's the whole problem...  SS [b]is[/b] a pyramid scheme. Those that benefited the most are the original beneficiaries that did not pay anything to get into the system and reaped all the rewards. The whole premise on how it was created was flawed.

What the solution is, that is a good point of debate. [/quote]

Not exactly. The first participants did get a higher rate of return than you or I will get. But we still will get a return. Some politicians like to pretend the government can and eventually will write off this debt to itself, but many of them know better and are just lying. Social Security is invested in non-marketable government debt, just like the savings bonds you may own. Like with savings bonds, the debt has to be paid off from general revenue, that's specified in federal law in the Social Security Act. Congress would have to pass a law to overturn the existing law. Do you think our craven congresspeople, even and especially the super-conservative ones, would risk their seats by supporting that? No way.

There are a lot of possible remedies and anybody who wants to save the system in good faith (which excludes a lot of folk on Capitol Hill) could probably easily reach a compromise on a balanced package of benefit cut and revenue increase measured that wouldn't hurt any given group too much. Go to the American Academy if Actuaries site, or SSA's research page, or even BPC, AARP or the Dominick-Rivlin commission. The menu of possible remedies is well known and has been debated and analyzed for many years. What we really need is political will.[/quote]

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