You paint with a very broad brush. I don't want SS to go away. It is a social contract that the US Govt. agreed to with the voting public - you pay X amount in over your working lifetime based on your income and you get a guaranteed amount Y back when you retire. I don't believe the Govt should break that contract. I could support any number of changes to that contract if it is phased in so that older workers and retirees get what was initially agreed to and successively younger workers get a modified version that returns a large fraction of what they have contributed with other avenues to save for retirement that could provide a better return than SS with commensurate risk. Low risk, lower return, higher risk, higher return. Perhaps a floor that makes sure there is something at the end even if individuals can't/won't save for their own retirement. But there needs to be some individual responsibility for planning for and saving for their retirement years.
The problem is boomers didn’t pay in enough and income of new workers isn’t high enough to support them. The solution is simple- pay out less, take in more. Dems want to pay out more, Repubs want to take in less. It is probably too late for privatization without creating a huge divide between the old and the young.
It's not all on the boomers - they played the game defined by the Govt and played by the Govt's rules. You can't retroactively go back and fault them for that. And successive generations like mine have entered the workforce with 100% knowledge of the game and its rules. You want to change the rules, negotiate a new social contract with voters. If you want to take in more via taxes, it is going to fall at the feet of younger workers. That's how the SS Ponzi scheme works. Older workers have played by the rules for a very long time and changing those rules late in their game is unfair to them. Most are far from being wealthy, my parents included. And paying them less than what was agreed to is also unfair. Phasing in a partial privatization approach for the youngest workers may be a viable approach but it needs to be in conjunction with an economy that provides more than mostly service industry type jobs where the cheapest labor source is always the default answer. The vast majority of higher paying skilled blue collar work and the lower-level white collar work that was tied with it has left the US in the push for globalization of the economy. Doubtful it will ever return so the gap between service industry and high tech will continue to widen and so too the income gap.
But enough rambling. I've given my $0.02 to the conversation. Time to go enjoy my retired life.
