...once we're old and have inherited our parents' money (and OH GOD, is there a lot of that!)

Speak for yourself. I come from a long line of dirt farmers.

If you are driving at what I think you are, we do need to start phasing out the entitlement systems and privatizing it for the younger folks. It's going to be a real pain in the taxpayer wallet for a while as the support of the older folks--we HAVE to keep up the payments for them for many years--becomes even more of the welfare program that it always was, but this is probably the price that needs to be paid for a few years to keep us from eventual collapse.

Means testing benefits is another option, especially for Medicare. There are other options too.

Someone a lot smarter than me would have to work out the details. I have no idea if it's even possible any more with the cancer of massive wealth redistribution so firmly metastized into our system. But something has to be done.

If I could bail out of the Social Security program, and not pay into it any more, I would be willing to write off all I had paid so far. In a New York minute. I don't know how many others would be willing to do that. Unfortunately, that would do the program no good financially, since all that money I paid in was long ago spent.

The only thing that might work financially is if I still kept paying something, but got no benefits. To keep this from being a total ripoff, maybe there would be some middle ground. I forego the benefits, but maybe only have to pay half the Social Security taxes I would otherwise pay if I kept the benefits. That's at least something.

If you are going to phase it out eventually, there is no way around the idea that some of us will have to pay into the system for some years, and get nothing in return. On the other hand, for people like me, the income tax system already takes far more money than I ever see in benefits, so I'm already used to it to some extent. Just think of it as just more money down a rathole, and grin and bear it.

This kind of thing badly needs to be discussed in Congress, but even the slightest attempt to change the current system causes Democrats to leap on you and tear your throat out with their teeth. A younger generation on a private pension is a generation they don't have under their thumbs any more. That's the first thing we have to get past.