TANSTAAFL
liberals need to have it tattoed to the insides of their eyelids.
Somebody HAS to pay... and the ones who pay are not the rich... it is the working poor. No matter how much you tax the rich... they can afford to move and be paid elsewhere, and be exempt from earing income in the US.
SO tax everyone at 11%.. the end.
I say we pass a flat tax, no tax breaks of any kind, and pass a law that the government can only spend 95% of the revenues with the other 5% saved to pay for responding to disasters/emergencies/hostilities.
Social Security... well it was originally supposed to be a personal pension plan where what you personally paid in you got back out, but that got shot down before it ever got enacted. It's not the republicans or democrats fault, it is just the way it had to be to be acceptable to people at the time who wanted immediate help for older citizens... not only being useful in 20-30 years when people finally had enough in it to retire on.
The boomer generation was the first one to get near replacement or replacement + 1 growth, and that trend has continued to the detriment of Soc. Sec. funding. Instead of 4-8 siblings and thus 4-8 working adults for every pensioner as it once was, now we have 2-3... and trending towards 2 or less. Alsdo life expectancy has greatly improved so pensioners are living adn drawing funds for much longer than anticipated...
The money has to come from somewhere, or there can't be any money to give. Are we going to gladly pay more ourselves via autorizing our reps to raise SS taxing rates for those who will retire overthe next 30-40 years knowing full well that it will probably be discontinued, and that in the end there really is only 20-30% of a decent pension to be had that way?
Or are we goign to pull the plug on it, and give back whatever people have contributed, tell them to put it in a private fund and have government wash its hands of the whole shebang...
neither solution is morally or politically acceptable... so nothing can or will be done about it.