But you said????

Inaccurate. Without SS, we MIGHT have more poverty. With it, we MIGHT have less poverty. I can bench press 5000# and I can prove it. I just needs some "help". Morphine does NOT take away the cause for pain. It numbs the pain. That is exactly what SS does. It masks the poverty. It doesn't take it away.

There you go again. Unsubstantiated. You don't even know how it came about to be that efficient.

Remember what happened with Madoff? When the pool of young suckers dried up, the old suckers bit the big one. Same with SS. If they let the youngsters like you off, what happens when the old ones of Ponzi Scheme claim money? Who pays into it? It is a Ponzi Scheme, is it not?

Aklim, your "ponzi scheme" analogy fails in one respect, investors in Social Security aren't private sector or voluntary.

What has being in the private sector or not got to do with anything? Do crooks only reside in the private sector and there are no crooks in govt? Really?

Yes, you are right that we are pressganged into the thing while Madoff's victims went willingly.

Edit: OTOH, Both groups were led into the respective programs with promises of great things in the future.

Well, that's what it is. After paying 3 times more than any other country for healthcare, some folks simply have no more money to put away for retirement, so they rely on SS. Some folks can't afford healthcare insurance or an additional retirement plan. But those are just the lazy members of society, according to Republicans.

Perhaps so. However, if you want to make that comparison, who would you compare it to and how does it compare when you consider everything instead of just one narrow channel? How about the obesity issue where we are more obese than the next country in the list by more than 10%? Think that doesn't raise costs? If their govt taxes more here to subsidize that there, do you take that into consideration or do you just consider that one item?

Yes, we know it is election time and you are doing your darndest to spread the word to "Vote Democrat" as subtly as possible without saying it. We get it. :rolleyes:

You don't get it and rarely ever have. All you've got is your strawman fantasies.

Get what? That you are trying to be subtle about the "Vote Democrat" in the election? Tell me I am wrong. Tell me that you side has no issues that you can find after long and hard searching. Please do. Analyze all your posts. Tell me that I am wrong and do reference some of them, where you can. That would be more fascinating than you witty and pithy replies. I can honestly say that I side with neither party and that they are both crooks, albeit dressed in different colors. Can you? Perhaps you are a "Closet Republican" but I can't tell that from your posts.

Tell me that I am wrong when I ask you to fairly compare the cost instead of simply cherry picking what you want to compare. Show me that you have done a cost comparison. I could say that the coffers in some country are swelled up by taxes in another area and thus they can afford to subsidize medical care and in so doing, it depresses the cost of medical care so that your comparison makes sense. Tell me that we are not more obese than any country in the world and that it doesn't make a difference in cost. I can cite you quite a few costly items that obesity causes, that is, unless you care to dispute the effect of obesity?

You are wrong.

So your contention is that Republicans are the devil and Democrats are pure saints?

Or is it that you are not cherry picking an item to compare and medical costs are the one and only issue when it comes to cost?

I await your next few uttered syllables as though they were gold. Although an elaboration would be really helpful to understand what you are saying, that is, unless that is all you really have.

PS. Do try to be as vague as you can so you get total deniability later on when asked to quantify what you just said.

Oh good grief. Please take your thumb out of your butt before you explode.

I'm no economist, but it seems to me that SS has been clicking along for 70+ years without missing a beat. It needs adjustments to keep itself solvent, but I don't think we should scrap it.

One problem with letting people be responsible for their own retirement is that many people just won't do it. What do we do with them? Let them starve out in the street?

Goodbye.

You do understand there isn't one thin dime in the SS trust fund.
Our great leaders have spent it willy nilly.

More was coming in than going out, so out leaders spent that too.

Now the day is coming when there won't be enough coming in to cover whats going out so they'll have to start taking money out of the trust fund to make up the difference.
Oh wait, there's nothing in there, my oh my what will we do ??

Funny a corporation must have reserves to pay it's pension obligations, ah but this is the government.

The SS problem isn't difficult, it's just a political problem. Do the math and figure out what the eligibility age is needed to make the numbers work, then raise the eligibility age to that number. The current retirement age in the US is ridiculously low based on current life spans, many people spend 20-30 years in retirement.