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You've got a deal!
Tom Brosz — (archived)

<If people our age are serious about this, let's see us deny ourselves government retirement benefits by voting to discontinue them once we reach retirement age. That would be a true measure of noblesse oblige. Furthermore, I'm sure our next-younger cohort would join us in voting to do away with it.

What do you say?



Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but ANY attempt to wean the younger generation from Social Security have been greeted by screams of outrage from the Democratic Party. Good God, look at how they received proposals to put a crappy 2 percent of one's income somewhere besides government IOUs.

I would cheerfully give up my Social Security benefits in return for an immediate cessation in the Social Security tax on me. And you know what? I would even let them keep what I've paid in already. Right down the rathole. Gone forever. My gift to society. You can imagine that this deal, however crappy for me, would look a lot better to someone just entering the job market.

How's that for a counteroffer? Would you be willing to support the government making this deal?

How many other people here would go for this?

After all, the common wisdom is that Social Security recipients are just getting their own contributions back. That it's not a welfare program tranferring money from workers to recipients. Shouldn't be a problem, should it? Kids don't pay, kids don't get benefits.

If Social Security is NOT a Ponzi scheme, this is perfectly workable.

You could fiddle with it a bit. Give them the option to pay a smaller amount for other benefits, like survivors' benefits and such. But you get the basic idea.

If the Democrats have any balls at all, I would dare them to make this offer to the public. Like school vouchers, you know they can't do it. That they have to rely on force to keep people in the program, or the whole thing falls apart.

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