What I’m trying to argue is had our government been more responsible in the past and they had kept the surpluses that social security was raking in at the time instead of spending it on other things we ought not to be spending it on, at the worst we could have long delayed this crisis and at best we could have prevented it altogether and not have to raise the retirement age in the first place.

I will concede the point that had Congress not treated Social Security like a bottomless trust fund it probably wouldn’t be a gnat’s wing away from bankruptcy today.

My point, though, is that raising the minimum age for SS benefits (not the minimum retirement age; people can retire whenever they please if they have the money to support themselves) is not something we can avoid. We WILL have to raise the minimum eventually and this is probably our best chance to do so with a minimum of discomfort. The longer we wait, the more painful it will be to change.

The problem with Social Security (apart from the fact that it’s an unconstitutional entitlement program and functionally identical to a ponzi scheme) is it’s being used for things it was never intended for. (Oh yes, there’s a history lesson coming. Settle in for story time, boys and girls. And don’t forget to take notes. There will be a quiz.)

The thing about SS is it was created during a time when “investment” and “savings” as we know it today really didn’t exist for anyone other than the very wealthy. 401(k)s did not exist. Individual investment in the stock market was almost unheard of except among the rich. Most lower and middle class Americans didn’t trust the stock market and didn’t have the education to effectively play the stock market if they did. Stock brokers were very rare and could only be found in major cities like NYC or Chicago (it was rare for any company other than railroads or heavy industry to have a presence anywhere outside their home state), and most Americans couldn’t afford to hire one anyway. Pensions existed but they were very limited. If you lived outside of a big city you probably didn’t get a pension. If you were a low-level worker or a self-employed farmer you definitely didn’t get a pension. If lower-to-middle class Americans had any savings at all it was in the form of “rainy day” savings; a cache of money they could use to get back on their feet if their house burned down or the crops were wiped out for a season or two.

The only “investment” the non-rich were able to make back then was children. When you got too old to work your kids would take care of you until you died, and when they got old their kids would take care of them, and so on. And there was NO talk of children moving away and putting down roots in another town when they grew up. If you were born in a tiny podunk town you Goddamn lived, worked, and died there too, probably in the exact same house you grew up in. That’s why if you’re a fan of the Western genre you hear a lot of stories about young people who were disowned and cursed by their families because they ran off to the “big city” or eloped with one of the hired hands. They were shirking their moral obligation to stick around and care for their parents when they reached old age. That’s also why there was such a stigma around being an “Old Maid”. Women with no children were a drain on society because they had no recourse but to mooch off the children of their brothers or sisters (if they had any), or the charity of others.

But I digress. In those days, if you weren’t wealthy and had no children when you got too old to work you basically had two options. Either you begged for money or you starved. And as harsh as it sounds, this was a situation most Americans were willing to live with prior to the 1930s. It was just generally understood that when you reached a certain age you were expected to settle down and churn out some kids who would take care of you when you got old. Consequently it was very rare for someone to be in a position where they were too old to work and had no one to take care of them. Poverty among senior citizens was relatively low and most of the seniors who did live in poverty could scrape by through the charity of their neighbors.

The turning point was the Great Depression, when poverty rates among senior citizens shot up past 50%. THAT was what Social Security was originally designed for. Support for the huge number of seniors who were suddenly forced into poverty by the Great Depression but were far too old to re-enter the workforce (not that there would’ve been any jobs available to them if they could).

Which brings me back to my main point. Social Security was originally intended only as emergency support for seniors. If you had any way at all of supporting yourself in your old age, you were not supposed to be receiving SS checks. And of course, it was assumed in the 30s and 40s that anyone old enough to qualify for SS benefits would only live for a few more years, making the expense of supporting them relatively small.

It was never anticipated back in 1937 (although in hindsight it should have been) that average life expectancy would increase so dramatically in the years to come. Nor was it anticipated that a whole industry would spring up dedicated to helping non-wealthy people invest their money and save for retirement, and that people would start accepting SS checks when they have no need for them. Social Security fundamentally changed the way Americans think of retirement. Retirement used to be what happened to you if you got so old you could hardly button your shirt in the morning, not a 10-20 year vacation. People didn’t look forward to retirement, they dreaded it. It was the ultimate sign of impending death. Now it’s become a kind of reward for reaching old age. An entitlement in the most literal sense of the word. We have people who are fully capable of supporting themselves filing for Social Security, and accepting SS checks for upwards of twenty years.

This should not have happened. We should have put the minimum age for SS benefits on a sliding scale tied to average life expectancy years ago. We also should have instituted a means test to prevent people from accepting SS benefits when they already have their own private nest egg. But Congress didn’t want to be accused of hating old people, and the longer they put it off the harder it became to change.

Now that Social Security is in crisis we have an opportunity to fix those mistakes. If we don’t do it now, it will become that much harder to do in the future.

any other facts of the post you don’t agree with?

Saying a program would have worked if only the feds could be trusted not to touch a huge sum of money sitting right in front of them is essentially saying it could not have worked.

Like saying it made sense to slather your kid in bbq sauce and leave him in the lion cage to cut on babysitter costs if only those lions could have been trusted.

If it all hinges on a certain group of people acting completely different than they ever have in the past then it’s a bad plan.

A better solution would be to simply divvy up all the money brought in this year for social security evenly up amongst all the recipients this year. That would mean that it fluctuates a lot and some people will get screwed but by leaving no surplus and no deficit and only spending exactly what is present in each years budget at least it will be sustainable forever.