@dancingtongue We've been told all our lives that social security will be utterly bankrupt by the time we're old enough to draw from it. My generation will retire the day we die on the job.

@NeuroticByNature I've heard it as well, going back to the Reagan-Tip O'Neal compromise where Reagan got his income tax cuts and O'Neil got an increase in payroll taxes to shore up Social Security and Medicare. A combined whammy of a rapidly aging population retiring and a shrinking younger workforce being taxed, plus the impact of "staglfation" as it was called at the time; a hang-over from the extreme inflation of the 1970's. And Congress keeps trying to put band-aids on the problem while going ahead ajd "borrowing" money that should be invested to finance other things.

Reality is that Social Security has never been intended in the last 70+ years -- if ever -- to be the sole means of retirement, but more a universal base line to assure that everyone was saving some money to survive on after work, even if it was at the poverty level. The same idea of universal insurance coverage we have for automobiles and keep trying to obtain for health care.

I understand your frustration. An uncle gave me the best advice I ever got. He told me to begin saving a dime out of every dollar for my retirement when I got a full-time job and launched career. He said don't look at it as saving 10% of your paycheck, but as that dime -- that pocket change -- that you squander on some impulse buying or treat. I took it to heart and even though we sometimes weren't sure where the mortgage payment or food for the table were coming from every month, I had my employer withhold 10% from my paycheck in an IRA, when they matched. And as hard as it was the first couple of years, it became much easier as our careers and paychecks improved. It is my primary retirement income. The Social Security a nice safety-net backing it up, as was intended.

@dancingtongue While there are some disabled and dependents of annuitants/disabled which one could argue is a form of welfare, 84% of beneficiaries are retirees who had to pay into the system for a designated period of time to qualify for benefits

Nope. They were TAXED. Paying into a system implies CHOICE. And there were NO Social Security trust funds. The only reason they qualified for benefits was the DemoNazis wanting to buy votes.

@Reason10 Ive never seen a more accurate description. Lol. Theyre alot louder than most cows Ive heard.