Quality of living increasing for people was unforseeable?

It's a broken concept because the government uses that money for other stuff often times nonprofitable and has to pay out of it's own funds of the tax base of the current younger generations... rather then it all going to the trust fund and paying out from there.

The very first person to receive a weekly social security check got more money then she put in to the program within her second check.    They should of started benefits to coincide 10-20 years down the line, but then that wouldn't of paid off for Roosevelt politically,

The problems with it are obvious. 

1)  It's losing money, and it will only get worse.  Social Security isn't the self sustaining thing it's supposed to be unless they end up cutting benefits somewhere.... and you know people would get mad about that.  It's currently the biggest expenditure in our government.

Really it's nothing but a drain on the economy because the government doesn't trust people to plan for their own retirmenets.

2) Furthermore it only covers those who have worked a lot...  and people married to them, it ignores the poor and really is just a government run "we don't trust you" fund.

3) Despite this, it does tend to give from the "Rich" worker to the "Poor" worker... with anyone making over 40K-50K a year likely to end up taking a net loss by the time any of us retire.  I wouldn't call 40-50K "rich" exactly.

Redistribution of the wealth from the rich worker to the poor worker with no help to those who had troubl finding any sort of work?  What's that about?  It's like some twisted republican/democrat compromise.

4)  The above only covers those who make it to old age.  The government is taking money out of the poor's mouth "just incase" you reach old age.  A lot of people could use that money right now... to get through the day.  If your going to do this... the poor shouldn't have to pay at all... they can't afford to have so much of their paycheck taken away today.

5) The government spent away all the trustfund money and called it revenue instead of debt.  Once we hit that wall that's another 2 trillion dollars of unaccounted for debt our country has... unless they pull out the carpet from someone.

In general it was a bad idea done badly.

A trust fund paid by rich workers to take care of the poor in old age.  That's something.

A trust fund paid by everyone, to pay for the last generation... that was just a bad idea.  Not accounting for population variances and increased quality of life is just stupid.  Declining birth rates are another big factor.  I mean it's no coicnidence the "Baby Boom" generation kicked off the problem.

The degree of the improvement obviously, along with decades of failure to adjust for reality.

So ... it's a broken concept because the gov't isn't sticking to the plan? Is a diet a broken concept just because your will breaks and you buy a gallon of ice cream?

(1) Again, poor execution, which can be (painfully) fixed.
(2) OK.
(3) I would like to know what assumptions that graph is using.
(4) So apparently a lot of Social Security is turning out to be just another tax ...

Anyway, I'm not trying to dispute that Soc. Sec. isn't working the way we're doing it, but you were saying it couldn't work -- that it is necessarily unstable.

OMG, that chart says younger workers are making less than older workers but will receive more benefits... Wow! Genius. What a way to "lie with statistics"...

FIrst the biggest problems, it doesn't index their contributions to inflation or assume the interest it would have been getting in a simple medium yield savings account. Next, it does add inflation for the benefits of future retirees, but not their wages. The third problem is it assumes a life expectancy increase and no raising in the retirement age.

Lastly, using lifetime contributions is very shady, they should break it down to yearly income, because it matter how long they were making how much not the total contribution. If you went back to the older people at the time when they were the age of the younger people, that chart would be very different (or if you could see into the future and predict the future wages the younger workers as they age).

The age will be going up for my generation, unless there's a shortage of jobs.

I would argue that's the same thing. 

Sure if they changed... just about everything about the program it could work.  As it is however it was just a poor idea.  I mean, just about anythign when it comes to politcs can work if you alter it enough.

Where do you see that?

As far as i can tell.... it shows the exact oppisite.

That older people will earn a lot more net benefits then workers who do currently.

http://www.urban.org/publications/900746.html

eww.....even them? thats sickening!!!

I disagree. 

When you referred to it as a pyramid scheme I thought you were talking about the very idea of it, not the deficits the plan happens to be running.  I don't think they would have to change "just about everything", although you may know more about this than I do, but I still don't see how that could be right unless you're attacking the foundational concept. 

Social Security can be fixed, its just going to piss a lot of people off when we try to fix it.

Social Security is (pretty much) an unfunded pension ... The only way to fix it is to scrap it and replace it with something better which (basically) means that a large group of people have to pay into it without getting any benefits from it.

The whole concept is a fund, paid by current workers to make sure retirees get their benefits paid.

Unless the plan is to make befit payouts sporadic i don't see how SS could work as intended... and if it was done that way... that's just really poorly done and broken in my opinion.

The same problem will keep reoccuring if you simply cutback benefits until the program dies a slow slow death where eventually befits are paid out at such an age it's pointless.

Either that or you have to cap the amount of money someone can get from the government, and then you lose the original idea of it.

Unless the US hits hard times we're in for continued decreased birthdrate, as just about every 1st world country faces.

Furthermore i'd simple argue that redistribution from rich workers to poor workers, while cutting out the poorest people, and greatly hurting the people who have trouble finding work is just a broken idea in the firstplace.

The reason Social Security is like it too is likely racism.  That way the Southern Democrats were able to cut out the women and the black people.  Since originally it only applied to full time wokers.  Since then they've made improvements and modified what the original intention was supposed to be... but it's still broken.