Quote Originally Posted by HoneyBadger View Post
Or we could just scrap the whole program and allow people to invest as they see fit instead of relying on the nanny state to care for them in their retirement. The whole program is just one gigantic step into a welfare state.... Because who would bite the hand that feeds them, right?
Right. Because the people out there that will actually need Social Security (as a result of their poorly planned and fiscally negligent lives) actually have the financial prowess to invest wisely during their more than likely low wage earning years.

Some people just don't get it.

Social Security isn't so much a welfare program as it is a program to protect the current system that we have. That might sound alike a cop-out, and it would be if it was coming from the liberal left... which isn't me.

Social Security is in place to keep the lower class complacent in their retirement years. It is there to keep people who didn't do any life planning continually living in at least a somewhat livable state in their retirement years. Seniors in a 'comfortable state' won't call on their progeny (who are more than likely similar in their life outlook and financial planning) to DO something for them. And when I say 'do something', it could be voting for a socialist or physically robbing their immediate neighbor. Social Security is a penance that keeps some of our weakest from being raised as champions for a change in how wealth is distributed in this country.

The last thing any of us want is for Social Security to go away tomorrow. You might believe that it is a wellfare program, and it very well might be. But the country you live in would become the country you definitely do not want to live in if it was abolished tomorrow.

I don't make a fortune, but I could give 2 flying shits about the amount I pay into social security. I invest far more on my own. Social Security will be gravy for me. If you're in a position that the amount Social Security deducts from your wages is making or breaking you, you just might be doing something wrong. And you will probably need Social Security when your retirement age comes. And despite how much any of us may hate it now, there isn't one among us who won't cash that check.

I agree that it sounds better on paper to allow people to do what they want with their own wages. And if everyone was like me or you, I would be on board for it. But there is a vast amount of our country's population that will spend every penny they earn during their 'working' years and demand to be taken care of in their later years when they can no longer work and they have absolutely nothing.

I am alright with Social Security. The amount of financial harm it does to me is negligible when compared to the harm the impoverished masses could do to me physically or in the ballot box.

There are far greater 'evils' to focus the conservative eye on than Social Security.