Ben Shapiro recently said that social security should be abolished and people should be expected to work until they die.
My first thought was how stupid it was to say something like that during an election year. The Republican base is elderly people and a lot of them rely on social security. Expecting 80 year olds to have to work to survive is a pretty grim vision for the country and one that nobody would vote for.
On the other hand, interest on our debt is probably going to be larger than the GDP way before I'll be eligible for social security. The program seems like a product of another time that's practically doomed to fail eventually. It's a ponzi scheme, but it's one that people are counting on.
At the same time, Ben is the last person who should be talking about cutting social security while advocating we send more money to Ukraine and Israel. Benefits that actually go back to the taxpayers are the last things that should ever be cut. But our ruling class is set on sending as much money as possible overseas. They'll never have the political capital to get rid of social security without committing electoral suicide. That's just my thought.
In any normal situation we would be discussing how we could taper the People out of it, and also first making exiting the program voluntary. How and how much folks would receive back in exchange for voluntarily signing off on never receiving Social Security is a negotiation. What we have instead is a 1 or a 0 retarded conversation. You cannot have people in their 60s or more just left high-and-dry after 30+ years of paying into this insane system. Equally, you should not require young people to pay into a system that they know will never be there for them.
100%.
Bernanke was the first person to admit the truth. That they can guarantee the payments, but cannot guarantee the purchase power of those payments. He's admitting that they are going to print to the moon, to inflate their way out of the problem.
Folks who make decisions like these, with nary a vote by the People on the topic, should be staked out in the sun for the ants.