Maggie's Farm

Without changes, there will be one person paying in for every one person taking out of Social Security. How is that any different from everybody just helping out their own parents and relatives, like in the old days when people assumed responsibility for their families?

Our Yankee neighbor Viking Pundit is always attentive to the subject of Social Security's survival, but I am not sure he is right in the fundamentals. After all, there is no "trust fund." It all goes into, and comes out of, federal taxes. If Social Security really did consist of an actual fund of money, run by a government authority, you know darn well that they would invest it. Our payments to SS are, in reality, nothing more than another tax on income.

Viking wants the candidates to speak up on the subject. They would never dare do so. "Third rail," etc.

My opinion on "greedy geezer" entitlements like Medicare and Social Security? They should be means-tested. But that will never happen, because politics is nothing if not irrational - and the older folks vote. In some precincts, they even vote from their graves.