Well, we have to realize that SS is inevitably a withdrawal system, not a deposit system. It is losing money basically now under the current system and it will lose money in the future under your proposed system (exactly when depends on the strength of the stock market).

The current average return is about 2.9% on $3trillion. While an 8% return on $3trillion is obviously a benefit, if a recession hits, we could suddenly lose half of the SS coffers giving us an 8% return on $1.5trillion and $1.5trillion in the hole. Thats only a $33billion dollar advantage under your system, which would take decades to recoup that lost $1.5trillion at 8% return. In a situation with higher outlays than inlays, we could end up accelerating bankruptcy by burning money faster than the rate of return can handle.

I would like to say, I am not an expert on SS so I could very well be misunderstanding some feature somewhere, but there certainly seem to be plenty of hypothetical scenarios which would result in a quicker bankruptcy through the markets.

Is America great yet?

Seems like a gigantic cluster of shit, hatred, and despair. Plus the person at the helm is one of the most incompetent leaders in Western history and somehow people think that bloated disgusting slob is going to fix it with his barely literate rants, lack of a work ethic, and a giant puppet’s stick up his ass being controlled by Putin and Mohamed Bin Salman.

The lunacy that Republican supporters think they are the ones who are the most pro-US when their values are the antithesis of the US declaration of independence preamble.

I’m hopeful the Democratic party will win and bring back some semblance of sanity to the US and make the US sane again.

You...really don't understand how the stock market works do you?

It absolutely does not take decades for the stock market to recover when it loses substantial value. More along the lines of...a couple years.

If you didn't change the payout at all from what SS currently has and had, there would be trillions upon trillions of dollars in their "trust" had it been invested in the market.

No, it wouldn't still just run out. It would absolutely last as long as the world economy is a thing.

If anything, the biggest issue here is how much is it acceptable for the US Government to own portions of these businesses?

And it absolutely was a Bill Clinton idea. He and that administration were the last ones we had that actually understood balancing out a budget.

I will say, while I realize it's very "anti capitalist" to have government owned businesses. I think if 12% of everybody's money was going into stocks, and thus virtually every US Citizen had ownership in companies...people's opinions of the stock market (and public companies) making obscene amounts of money would VASTLY change.

While they absolutely have the ability to invest in these companies now, many lower income people simply aren't going to sock away that much of their money into the stock market consistently.

You don't seem to understand what I have said. I am not talking about how the stock market interacts with itself, I am talking about how the stock market could interact with a declining pool of money that is constantly being withdrawn from. Discussing the raw returns only makes sense if you aren't constantly changing the amount of money in the pool.

That said, I am not necessarily against the idea. I just think that calling it completely risk free seems a little optimistic.

So, as a result of the released texts, we have pretty clear evidence of quid pro quo offers coming from the Trump team to the Zelensky team. To pull one example:

"Heard from White House—Assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate/"get to the bottom of what happened" in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington."

Oh yeah, there's that too. And think about it, this is a guy who saw a disease that affected a lot of people on another continent from him, would probably never affect him or people from his country, but was bothered enough by the pain he saw that he decided to hunt a parasite to extinction. You can say what you want about his job performance as president, but of the presidents we've had, Carter is one of the best people to ever become president, certainly the best to have been alive during my lifetime.