What's wrong with Social Security

There has been a lot of talk about the escalating benefit costs of social security, and how to "fix" it, to rein in runaway benefit costs.

To do this, we need to admit that SS is more like an entitlement and less like a benefit plan. That's going to be tough to do, because for decades it's been sold like a benefit plan. But if we are honest, we know that SS benefits the poor much more than it benefits the wealthy, due to the way benefits are calculated. So, to an extent, "means testing" already exists.

It's interesting, though. All manner of people - including "conservatives" on this board, jump out and down about how they "paid into social security and deserve a payout". However, they don't act like that about other forms of taxation.

Just like Obama's "if you like your plan, you can keep it" turned out to be a lie, democrats past discussions making it seem like SS is some kind of a pension plan, is also a lie.

When SS was created, this concept of a "retirement" as something fun and exciting didn't really exist. People worked for as long as they were physically able to, and once they stopped, they were given money to live on to help ensure they didn't go hungry in the couple of years between stopping working and death.

What's killing SS is the LENGTH of payments. It was never intended for people to draw benefits for 20 or more years.

What seems like the obvious answer would be to dramatically push back the retirement age - maybe to 75 - and get rid of early benefit payments - probably doesn't take in to account that, with certain careers and certain health issues, one may be able to live until their 80s or 90s, but may not be able to legit work for that long. Those later years, to be unfortunately cruel, aren't very productive when it comes to the ability to earn money.

I would probably set the age at 75, and then starting at age 70, if one cannot physically work - there would need to be some kind of private medical analysis to qualify this - then they can start taking benefits at an earlier age. I would start these regulations for anyone that is age 40 or under at the time of enactment.