C(ertainly) N(ot) N(ews) and fact checking?!?!.... I'm telling 'ya, CNN is on the same merry-go-round as Fox *News*... hopefully, though, by the next 10 years the government will have pulled the country out of the trillion dollar defecit Bush has put us in...

Well, at least he's changed the subject and brings attention to something a little more relevant than a haircut.

Hey, this is really an improvement.  During bush's (lowercase intentional) Social Security-Palooza in '05 they had it bone dry in the next decade if I recall correctly.

Well, you don't have it quite correct, think the forecast was the late 2030s. And now we find out that it is 2041, gaining a year because, I assume, of decent economic conditions. What the H___, I in all likelyhood, will not be around in 2041, so I should care less that retirees after that are faced with reduced benefits (75% and declining over time). Let the next generation take care of it.  JJ below has a point that if SS funds had not been mixed into the budget in the mid 60s, things might be a little different.  If the rates and ceilings hadn't been raised in the 80s, certainly things would be a lot worse, starting in the next decade. As the workforce shrinks in relationship to retirees, things will change. As economic conditions change (and they will, down and up) deadlines will change, but the reality is that unless something is done soon, SS will be unable to meet its projected commitments at some date in the future.

hey uncle ozzy, thanks for the fairy-tale!

And the "misinformation" I presented is??????????????????? SS funds were mixed with General Revenue funds in the mid 60s. Fact. In the mid 80s, during the Reagan years, SS withholding rates went up along with the salary ceiling. Fact. It is projected that in about 2040, surplus SS funds, counting redeemed treasury notes, will be gone. Fact.  Projected benefits beyond that point, assuming no changes in the program will have to be cut to 75 - 80% in order to prolong solvency. Fact. We are using SS funds in the General Budget, swapping those funds for notes.  Where will the money come from to cover the notes, government is already spending more than it takes in, where will it get more revenue???? The funds you have paid into SS over the years are not and have never been "set apart" in an account just for you (as opposed to the funds in a 401K or IRA), they have always gone to pay current retirees.  Fact. If you are under 30, you had better be making plans to cover most of your own retirement costs. Advice to be heeded.

When you owe more money than you get in you are out of money. Some call it being broke. The Government could pront more money or raise taxes, so you could say the money will never run out. I think RSK missed the point hrere.

Print

Unless I can't read a chart right we currently take in $150 billion more than we pay out. Sure, we can argue all day about the upcoming baby boomer generation retirement, but the main issue continues to be that congress keeps siphoning funds from the SS treasury to make the deficit look lower than it really is. If they left the dang fund alone to begin with the boomer retirement would most likely be a roadbump - unless you believe that the mean death age will continue to grow at the unprecedented rates of the last few decades. Scary thought that, a 150 year old doctor McCoy...

Exactly. The system isn't broken. The tweaks made in the '80s worked. The government just needs to honor its IOU promises to put the money it took out for deficit reduction back in.

They intentionally are trying to scare everyone with this SS money drying up. They've even got financial planners repeating this meme as well as the SS agency. When or if SS is in trouble the Congress can appropriate more money like they do with everything else. It will come from somewhere. Funding it at 75% isn't going to cut it for people who have have been paying in all their working lives. I don't see baby boomer standing for that. Maybe we should stop making useless military crap that doesn't work. I'm sure some smart minds can find a solution. It's been demonstrated that the American people don't want their SS being messed with.

"They intentionally are trying to scare everyone with this SS money drying up"

Oh, of course. That's right. This whole thing is just a big hoax to scare people. All the Evil Republicans want is to completely destroy the great program of Social Security. There's no problem with the current system at all. We just need to fight the Republicans on this issue and demand that nothing be done, since there is no problem with Social Security. There should be absolutely nothing done to try to bring solvency to the program, because there's nothing wrong with it in the first place! It's all a big hoax by the Evil Republicans that is designed to scare people into going along with their plan to destroy Social Security! Oh, the trickery of it all!

Thanks for summing it up. After all, I think we remember what happened the last time the Republicans told us that doom was imminent (re: Iraq).

Julia says the money will "come from somewhere".  TRUE.  It will come from succeeding generations, who will be remarking how dumb we all were to dream up this CHAIN LETTER and expect our descendants to make good on it.

Personal retirement accounts (401k, Keough, Profit-sharing plans, medical savings accounts, tax-exempt gains on sale of personal residence, and a myriad of other REAL answers to saving for old age) are quietly replacing Social "Security" and will continue to do so.  This will continue to the point that SS will play a minor role in most people's retirement picture, but will be there for those who have not been able to save in other ways, or have met with disasters wherein their other savings assets became tapped out .

well perhaps if dumbaya would stop commiting treason by talking down about t-bills (just a bunch of paper in a drawer!) and raiding the fund to help disguise the true costs of his disatorous economic policies things would not be so dire. But you go right ahead and ignore everything except your partisanship, yeah that helps a lot....

Here's my plan.

Get out of Iraq, and put the billions we would have continued spending there into Social Security.

Yes yes I know it's brilliant. [taking a bow while patting myself on the back]

It's so simple

Which is of course is why it'll never happen ;-)

Great Jeter. I guess you're just fine with declaring defeat you surrender monkey.And as sarcastic as the adorably naive rino is, he's just trying to mess up plans for the all-retiree army we need for Syria.

None of those Boomers are going to enlist if they've got fat SS checks coming in.I say drain it!

Hundreds of billions spent in Iraq of any other misadventure is chump change compared to TENS OF TRILLIONS in entitlement liabilities on our balance sheet.

Also, for perspective:  Katrina recovery spending will match what is being spent on Iraq.

Hmmm.  Rebuilding an American city costs more than destroying a foreign city.  Imagine that.

'Tis food for thought.  Perspective's required in all these money considerations.  If Katrina recovery expenditures are a drop in the bucket compared to entitlement guarantees, this is ominous.

Blitzer was careless with his language because as shown in the article the Social Security fund will not have zero money.  However, the term is used casually to indicate that when you have no EXTRA money, as will be the case for SS, that you are "out of money" so I think this is a bit of a nitpick by MMFA.  Social Security will be bankrupt meaning unable to pay 100% of its  obligations.

This is not a partisan issue, both sides agree that this will occur.  It is a BIG deal, if you don't think so try taking a 20% pay cut or only paying your creditors 80% of your bill.  I assure you they will notice.  The suggestion that we can get the money from somewhere else in the government doesn't make sense to me because currently we are taking money FROM Social Security to pay for other programs within government.  Why would THAT dynamic change?

There are two viable solutions, neither of which is pleasant.  Both of which will eventually (IMO) be implemented in part in order to FIX this problem (providing global warming hasn't destroyed the Earth by 2041).  First, social security taxes WILL BE increased and will likely include expanding the tax to earnings above the current threshhold of $97,500.  Second, Social Security benefits WILL BE reduced by increasing the eligibility age for receiving benefits or reducing benefits per year.

Remember the most important fact regarding Social Security.  When this program was put in place in the 30's the average lifespan was about 15-20 years less than it is today.  After people retired they died fairly quickly.  This WAS NOT meant to be a retirement program.  Current projections in the medical profession are that the human body should be able to live upwards of 125 years in the not too distant future (I heard that at a retirement lecture recently, have not confirmed it but it makes sense to me based on medical advancements and how the lifespan has increased in the past 100 years).  Social Security is going to have to be funded to be able to pay retired people for possibly 50 years when they only contributed into the system for 40 years or less.  It is going to need more and more and more money to remain viable, unless the payout plan is changed dramatically. 

One other point, the longer we wait to start fixing this problem, the more drastic the solution will have to be for future generations.

I thought Bush's plan should be implemented for 18 years olds right now and leave everyone else alone. That way in 47 years he plan would be switched forever to a much better system. This way, no one 19 and up would be bothered and the long term social security fix would be phased in.

I still like the idea of giving every 18 year old an old person to take care of. Since that is pretty much how the system works anyway.

ss will not be "out of money".  fine to talk about all the fixes needed,  but blitzer implies that the last penny in the fund will trickle out in 2041.  untrue.

to be clear, it would only be "bankrupt" if no more money were coming in.

That is not true.  Definition of Bankruptcy from the BNET Business Dictionary. the condition of being unable to pay debts, with liabilities greater than assets.

Bruce, you are right and Blitzer is right.

That is exactly what bankrupt means.  Imagine if medicare benefits were cut to everyone by 30+ percent.  MMFA would be the first to haul out quotes on how bankrupt the system was and we would have to raise taxes on the rich.

that would be true bruce, except that we are not talking about a business.  there is nothing set in stone about the payouts and there never has been.  to toss around the terms "out of money" and "bankrupt" is not applicable  to this situation.  it implies that no one is going to be getting anything.

You might infer that but the term is applicable.  Bankruptcy is merely a legal definition and can be applied to individuals or corporations if certain conditions are met.  Personal bankruptcy generally involves creditors receiving a percentage of total money owed them based on what is available, or having debts completerly wiped out. 

I don't know if the government could ever technically be "bankrupt" because like I said earlier they WILL have to resolve this issue before it comes to that.

we disagree.  i think using those terms gives a false picture of the situtation.

Anyone ever doubting that CNN has truly become the Co-opted News Network should have those doubts no longer. Sometime in 2000 or 2001 Harper's Magazine (the Lewis Lapham one not the fashion one) in their Readings section reprinted the leaked minutes of an IDF Israeli executive meeting discussing the need to do something about Ted Turner's CNN to make it more firendly to Israel. It was at that time that Gerald Levin of AOL-Time Warner forced Turner out. Since then, CNN has consistently been a mouthpiece for right-wing, Hawkish, and/or Zionist propaganda.

Does anyone else ever wonder if the contact email addresses for places like CNN or PBS are actually just ways for those agencies to gain intelligence data of people who might represent a political threat to those agencies' conservative or Zionist agendas? Every time I've tried to send a complaint about their lousy coverage of anything all I get back is a form letter thanking me and a pitch to buy something. But their coverage and bias never seem to change.

What few want to discuss is that the U.S. is running out of money.  You see it on a micro-scale in the profusion of pawn and paycheck advance shops and the ubiquitous offers for second mortages, but it's also happened on a macro-scale, due to the spend and borrow current administration.  We didn't win the Cold War after all.  The communists have won.  Bush sold our future and our children's future to the Chinese. 

I urge all my friends to save their money.  Hard times are a comin'. 

HOLLY:

You are exactly correct. The "health" of our economy has clues all over the place, but they are not getting attention. You mentioned the second mortgage push, but it's also seen in the savings of Americans, which for the first time shows Americans OWING more in debt than they hold in savings accounts. America is rapidly losing any economic health for its middle class, which is suffering the loss of good manufacturing jobs, stagnant wages, and "disappearing" pension funds (NO planned-for and paid-into retirement after all).

Meanwhile, the stock market pushes record highs (which doesn't help 90% of Average Americans in their daily lives), while the rich-poor gap widens exponentially. The economic rules the GOP has put into place since 1994, and sent into overdrive with the arrival of Bush, has sent America into a Balkanizing spiral into a CLASS society favoring only the very wealthy.

Watchdog agencies of the Executive Branch and regulators have been defunded and their numbers decimated, making them almost totally ineffectual, unable to do their jobs, to the detriment of the entire nation. The GOP, of course, hates regulations of any sort, because they interfere with unfettered profit taking.

If America had an early warning system for the economy, like that for an approaching tornado, the sirens would be screaming now. Unfortunately, we have "happy news" rightwing media who look at Donald Trump and Halliburton, and say everything's going GREAT, what' the problem? Meanwhile, average Americans are losing their quality of life on a daily basis. Our middle class is severely in peril ... and nobody in the GOP cares a whit.

"Class Warfare"? Damn straight, and the NeoCon elitists in charge of America's policies are kicking our butts. The signals are all there, but unfortunately it has to reach widespread crisis proportions before the bulk of people will wake up to what's being done to them.

[P.S. Exxon/Mobile is doing WONDERFUL, so all is right with the nation. Right? WRONG!] 

The scary thing is that when the bottom falls out, we'll be at the mercy of foreign manufacturers.  Scarcely anything is made in the U.S. any more.  Are there really enough service industry jobs to pull us out of another depression?

Yep, Tex, if we had those sirens, they'd be wailing:

* A negative savings rate

* 1.5 million possible foreclosures

* a falling, falling, FALLING dollar

22% of all Americans retire on JUST SS.  Their choices are cat food or medicine and saying, "Welcome to Wal-Mart," or, "Paper or plastic?"

Hey, Rino Hunter, do you ever drift from the Right?  I've never heard you opine something that Rush doesn't promote.

Stop it, Holly ! That's a bunch of cold hard reality you're talking there.Haven't you turned on Fox Nooz and checked the Dow lately?Everything's booming.

Even the Repubs I work with blame their slow schedules on me for not rustling up enough work. I suggested to one rabid Hillary-hater (he doesn't know why, just does) that it was a combination of dry weather (leaky houses are good for us) and the economy.

He understood the weather part, but seemed a little flummoxed by the economy part, as he's been hearing that it's great.He must have done some thinking on the subject, as he later speculated that people might think the Democrats are going to win in '08, and so are nervous with their money.

You heard it here first;Clinton was responsible for 9/11 and most of the 3 or 4 years following (the bad stuff at least), but just in case , after 7 years they feel like they may be running out of weasel room, Republicans are blaming current events on the mere possibility of Dems in power in a couple years.

or maybe I just got an isolated wingnut opinion.

Regarding the stock market, it's a house of cards and a hurricane is coming.  I've been transferring to cash for weeks.  I made some money in the market and I'm not about to lose that money, as those who linger in the market will in 5 days or 5 weeks.  Yes, I know the neocons gloat about the market, but it hasn't risen much since Clinton was prez.  It was 12,000 then.  And it's 12,000ish now.   

Well, actually near 13,000 but who's counting.  Fine if you want to take your money and run, I don't think that's a bad idea but there are some perfectly safe investments out there that will get you 4-5% per year, better than 0%

The market took nearly 2 years to recover from 9-11 so we are really at levels we probably would have been at 2 years ago without that occurrance.  I agree that the market isn't taking off any time soon.

HOLLY:

Tens of thousands of Americans experienced the same thing I did. I had a Mutual Fund which, with Clinton in office, was up to about $22 a share, and I felt confident with about $80 grand in that investment.

Bush took office, and the shares plumeted to $7 a share ... Bush cost me about $50 grand ... and it hasn't come back YET.

To make matters worse, I needed the money to buy a house, so I was forced to pull the money out at "BUSH" rates, which means that cash will not be enjoying any rise in value (when the Democrats return to the White House). It's gone, and at bargain basement Bush economy return. Thanks, GOP.  

You are really reaching when you blame Bush, or any president, for a change in value of equity stocks.  There is MANAGEMENT of your fund to consider, there are events such as 9-11, Katrina, etc.

Be serious.  If you have conclusively proven that a (party of your choice) presidency,  or (party of your choice) majority in house or senate will guarantee a price level in ANY common stock, you should publish a newsletter.  There are plenty of wishful thinkers who will buy that fiction, and you will be rich as a consequence, however unethical it may be to take advantage of such suckers.

Holly is right about an overvalued stock market.  We have price/earnings ratios currently that compare to Japan's when the Nikkei Dow was at 35,000.  They plummeted and have stayed at roughly half of those previous highs for (what?) 15 years?

LEMOC:

I only "blame" people for what they CLAIM they will affect. Republicans run for office based on how GREAT they will be for the economy, how GREAT they are for creating jobs, how GREAT they are at national defense, how FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE they are at cleaving to smaller and less intrusive government.

So, in each category, I judge whether they have delivered on their promises made while running for office. In every case, the GOP LIED about their abilities and goals. In every case, once in office, they do the OPPOSITE of what they promised to do.

So, you tell me I can't BLAME Bush? Why the hell NOT? He promised up and down that Gore would cause economic disaster, while he and the GOP would spell prosperity for all. I blame him, because he LIED to me, and FAILED to deliver on his promises. To NOT blame him would be to assume he was lying from the beginning, and never meant ANY of the things he promised. Is that YOUR position? 

"22% of all Americans retire on JUST SS"

Who's fault is that? People should know better than to simply rely on Social Security for their retirement. You should have at least one other form of retirement benefit such as a Roth IRA or a 401K. You shouldn't depend on a government program for your entire retirement. If you're dumb enough to do that, you deserve what's coming to you.

Well, Rino, an IRA or a 401k IS a good idea, & many of us are following that path. The problem, son, is that many of the working poor are not offered a 401K, & find it immensely difficult to put aside money for an IRA. Its hard to save money when you have  a family & are struggling just to put food on the table & clothes on your children's backs. When you have practically nothing now, its hard to put any away for the future.

I know, I know... they should have gotten a better education, or what have you... but when you COME form so little, the daily struggle for survival sometimes takes precedence over your long term needs. There have always been poor, & cold-hearted, Scrooge-like lectures have thus far failed to correct this reality. As a people, we can either show them a little compassion & a little help, or we can take a page out of the writings of Malthus & his brother Social Darwinists & permit poverty & starvation to remove their unappreciated presence from our gene pool.

And that would be our fault.

In light of what you point out, SS will be there to put a floor under those who need it the most, and to others who have had other savings vehicles it will not have as much importance.

SS will, therefore, be returning to its role as originally conceived.

So, Rino, do you mimic Scrooge under the cross of the Christ?

And again, do you ever deviate from the party line?  Or do you only say what you're told to say?

Either way, lock your doors.  3 ghosts are going to come a callin'.

"And again, do you ever deviate from the party line"

I would say that I'm more libertarian on some issues than I am conservative. I oppose all corporate welfare and think it should be immediately ended. I support a smaller FCC that gives the networks more leniency on content in their programs. I oppose all of the pork that the Republicans in Congress have been spending in the last few years. They've turned their back on their constituents and become supporters of big government. I oppose banning pornography and believe that online gambling should be legal. Those are just a few issues.

In a perfect world, you offer a perfect solution. In a perfect world someone could start saving for retirement as soon as they start their working lives.

Since we're talking about a perfect world, salaries would increase at a rate greater than the increase in the cost of living. People once secure in their careers start saving even more.

When retirement does come, everyone is happy, healthy, wealthy and wise.

You started your post with a question concerning someone who retires with nothing but Social Security benefits; "Who's fault is that? ".

We don't live in a perfect world. Most people live off of their paychecks. Salaries have not kept pace with inflation. No one has long term job security. By the time people are of age to retire, they will have worked for several different employers (at least).

People are "downsized" when companies know they can get a younger person to work for less. The person who is downsized eventually returns to the work force, but in the meantime, bills must be paid, children must be fed, so retirement accounts are sometimes used just to get by. There might not be any other option. But you asked "Who's fault is that?"

Another thing is that believe it or not, as you age, people get sick. When a worker gets sick, salaries get reduced or just stop. Medical bills pile up. As do the mortgage, utilities, etc. Even if retirement accounts are not used to survive, under these conditions, new contributions are not made. "Who's fault is that?"

I remember back in the nineties, I lost a terrific job. Full, free health insurance, company funded retirement plan (with no contribution by me) and a great salary. The company closed. I was lucky to get a job making about 75 % of my former salary. Very few benefits and a 401k plan for retirement. I wasn't allowed to participate for the first year. The 401k plan after my first year with the company had lost 50 % of it's value. "Who's fault is that?"

I agree that in this country we do a terrible job teaching our youth about money management.  Money management is simply a habit of savings and the discipline to follow through.  If people understood the value of time and how little money needs to be set aside at a young age to have it grow into a million dollars at retirement, they would put themselves in such a better position.

People think they can start saving for retirement at 40 or 45 or 50.  They have wasted that valuable aset called time that they could have been using to their advantage for twenty years, compounding dollars that would be a very nice six-figure sum by the time they are 40 (and thats with just a few hundred a month savings).

But this is an instant gratification society, and the credit card is a more viable option than depriving ourselves of something fun.

Was it Howard Ruff in the late 70s, early 80s that was warning everyone to get out of the market and buy coins (gold & silver)? Where is he at now? The market goes up (like it did in the late 90s), the market goes down (as it did in the early 00s) and yet over time, the trend is positive. On the down side, I saw somewhere recently that over 50% of the population is dependent on government in one form or another (welfare, subsidies, jobs, etc) for part or all their support. This also is unsustainable as is the curent trend in SS and Medicare. But, what the heck, I'm moving my funds to munis and SS "collapse" is beyond my forecasted lifetime. I'm (like the politicans in WA DC) leaving it up to the post boomers to solve.

it's true that overall the market goes up.  but there have been long stretches where it has been flat.

Oh my word, do we have to go through this again?

Social Security will not be "out of money" in 2041 (the date based on current projections); even less will it be "broke."

The prediction is that the surplus, the surplus deliberately and consciously built up to see the system over the hump of the so-called Baby Boomer retirement bulge, will be depleted and Social Security will be back to the pay-as-you-go status it has held for most of its existence.

What's more, even at that point, the system will be able to pay 75% of projected benefits. Not current benefits, projected ones - projected ones that are considerably higher than those now.

While your particular initial benefits upon retirement are geared to your own earnings history, changes in the rates of those initial benefits are pegged to wage inflation. Since over time wages have tended to rise faster than prices (happily), the real value of those initial benefits also rises.

What that means is that 75% of projected 2041 benefits is actually more in real terms - can buy more stuff - than initial benefits today. Which in turn means that even if the projections are right and do not improve and if we do nothing at all, retirees in 2041 will enjoy a slightly higher standard of living via Social Security than retirees in 2007.

Would that every other retirement system was equally "broken." 

I guess the question is, are the "projected benefits" any more in "real dollars" than the current benefits are?  Of course, the total dollars will be much greater but that means nothing. 

I fail to see how many people on this thread think that only paying 80% of projected benefits is not being "out of money".  That would be a complete disaster for the economy and for millions of Americans, so much so that it will never be allowed to occur. 

Do you mean to say that people on a payroll would actually be FORCED to pay higher SS rates, in order to keep it afloat? You make it sound like we're on a forced march, Bruce.

Isn't this all voluntary? 

My pitiful offering of humor for the day.

are the "projected benefits" any more in "real dollars" than the current benefits are

Yes, they are, in fact 75% of projected benefits are. That's what I just said. Pay attention. 

I fail to see how ... paying 80% of projected benefits is not being "out of money"

I fail to see how having the money to pay 80% of projected benefits - again, more in real terms than benefits being paid today - can be called being "out of money." 

I apologize for misreading your prior post.  I'm interested in reading about your claim that 75% of projected benefits is greater than 100% of current benefits in real dollars.  Do you have some source documentation on that?

Larry:

If you owe a guy $100, and you can pay him $80, will he TAKE it? The IRS will. Any sane company will. Credit Card companies were BUILT on the concept of people paying their bills over time. So are mortgages.

So, not having ready cash does NOT indicate "bankruptsy". Business people blithely refer to such a situation as a "minor cash-flow problem". As long as one is breathing and willing to work, having 80% to keep debtors at bay is far from bankruptsy ... in fact, debtors will FIGHT to keep such a person from DECLARING bankruptsy.

"Insolvency" is the key to a legal declaration of bankruptsy, and SS will never reach that stage. When such a situation threatened in the 80's, none other than BOB DOLE engineered a "fix" which made SS solvent for the next decades. If "fixes" can be implemented, they WILL be, and so this talk about a bankrupt system is just silly partisan wishful thinking. The Rightwing has opposed SS since it was implemented under FDR's direction, and (not surprisingly) it has been one of the best programs for the betterment of America in history. The GOP ... so often wrong, so predictably cold. 

<>Typical Republican solution:  just tell everybody to save more!  Considering that millions can't even afford health insurance, or can't buy it for any amount of money due to pre-existing conditions, that's easier said than done. 

<>As my late father used to quip: "To Hell with you, I've got mine". Is that the new Republican motto?

Nerz, I think the same mindset that came up with "Nobody told the Negros they have to live in Compton" is still at work.

Believe me, some of the most independent, self-sufficient, bootstraps-pulling Republicans I know here behind the Orange Curtain have inherited money or real estate, had a fully sponsored college education , been slid into a very nice career through connections/family.or combinations of all of the above.

And they can't understand the laziness of people who aren't as financially secure as they are.

Exactly.  Somehow, many of these "market forces" devotees forget that great wealth is built within the framework of society.  Unless you got rich by discovering  gold on your property, it's safe to say that you've benefitted from the labor of other people, from the roads, power grid, police protection, copyright office, etc.   

What gets me is the attitude, implied by most and even explicitly stated by others, that poverty is a choice. 

HB

That sounds suspiciously like Class Warfare your talkin' there, boy.

Keep it up & you just might end up vacationing down at Club Gitmo, where they know how t' deal with radicals like you.

I'm watchin' you boy.

I'm watchin' you.

Why should we expect the government to give us money?  I believe it the responsibility of a person to provide for themselves.  The only exception i can find is for injured or mentally unstable, or mentally retarded people.  I have been putting 100 dollars a month away for myself dilligently since i started working at the age of 18.  I will secure my retirement for myself and my family.  Why should we rely on other peoples forced "generosity"?

BOB:

In theory, your proposal is sound. However, REALITY often intervenes, and presents the nation with a dilemma.

President Hoover believed as you do, that the government had no place "intervening" in the welfare of the citizens. Sink or swim, survival of the fittest, "Ant and the Grasshopper" philosophy. Problem was, Industrialization presented the nation with many situations, such as farm families, which traditionally cared for their elders on the farm until their (early by today's standards) deaths, was replaced by the able-bodied moving to the big city for jobs, deserting the farm. Tens of thousands of elderly were penniless, and with no recourse except to die in the streets.

Industries were loathe to provide anything resembling pensions; that would come with increased unionization. 

At the same time, industrialization gave rise to labor unrest, and SOCIALIST thinking was seizing the minds of a great many workers in America. Depression hit, and there was no faith in America's financial institutions. Meanwhile, the Rockefellers and Duponts were buying Packards and Deusenbergs, fabulously wealthy in the midst of 30% unemployment and starvation.

And Hoover sat and wrung his hands.

Hard for folks today to realize this, but these were NATION THREATENING problems. Unless something was done, the experiment in this Constitutional democracy was likely to be cast aside as being UNRESPONSIVE to the needs of the people.

FDR deemed that it was unacceptable for our elderly, after working a lifetime, would be left destitute. He formulated a plan to have a minimal subsistance program ... paid into by both worker and employer ... to guarantee a modest amount to keep these elderly from having no option but TO die in the streets. This was a decision that defined our nation as compassionate and responsive to the needs of its citizens. This change from Hoover's Libertarianism saved the nation from disbanding, of that there is little doubt.

So, I claim to you that Libertarian ideas, while theoretically sound, in PRACTICE are as unworkable as purely Socialist ideas have proven to be a failure (Socialist as in the state controlling all means of production).

Cleaving to the idea that all men in a society are islands unto themselves, and they should sink or swim "law of the jungle" fashion, with no intervention from society's government ... well, that is not a workable notion. If it had been adhered to in Hoover's time, we would not HAVE this nation which allows you to posit how citizens should "best" behave with total autonomous self reliance. 

There is no SS crisis. At least not until we start to put granny out on the ice floe. SS payments come out of the current output of the farms and factories of the US, not out of some imaginary pile of money.