quash wrote:
Money that the government gives you simply for existing that you can do anything you want with (including investing in your own retirement) is totally the same as paying money to the government that they totally pinky swear to give back to you as soon as you hit a certain age?
> Money that the government gives you simply for existing that you can do anything you want with
Minus the means testing for age or disability, that's what SS is, yes. A simple cash transfer for the individual to use as they see fit.
> The government isn't going to allow this program to live
Who is this "government"? It's a bunch of assholes selected by the electorate! How many times has congress led by Clinton/Bush/Obama/Trump tried to cut or kill Social Security and Medicare? A thousand million times. How many times has it passed? Zero. Why? Because they still need to be able to scoop up a few assholes to vote them in.
They can murder the shit out of kids abroad as much as they want. They can cut taxes on billionaires to zero. They can privatize almost every commodity and hand it over to the banks. This stuff is trivial, because it doesn't personally affect the lives of their voters in a clear and direct way whatsoever.
Are they really going to allow the 20% benefit cut 35 years from now go through, or are we going to get our shit together within that time and fund the thing, by lifting the cap or any other method?
This reminds me of the time you were talking about going to war with China or whatever when we invented ICBMs a lifetime ago. There are some things that can't happen - we'll be starving from climate death long before our politicians castrate themselves by openly destroying the New Deal. The donors have incredible power, but they're still only men with a giant megaphone and an army of paid biblethumpers.
....
It is nice to see you coming around to communism by embracing Karl Marx's "freedom is only possible once you're free from need" argument, though. My father and grandfather only got a single SS paycheck before dying, thanks to the means testing. While my uncle lives off way more money than he put in, spending it on animals who are his only true companionship in this world. The only modern politician that offered him anything was Sanders, who offered him a raise back in 2016. But of course he thinks Sanders is the devil.