[gumby]

Yes. The SS system is clever, but it required a lot of sleight of hand to get it into place -- but that approach has kept it alive for 80 years so far.

First, SS is universal rather than means tested in order to garner enough support to keep it in place. It's ridiculous that someone with millions in assets will receive a relatively small SS payment each month once they turn 70, but if the system had any decision making in it, it would eventually be gutted by those who "only want it to go to the deserving", with all the misty, hoop-jumping etc that you get with welfare assistance. Essentially money is wasted on the wealthy in order to make sure those who really need it get it.

Second: "they paid into the system" is deliberate propaganda. We all "pay into the system". Dollars are fungible -- one marked "social security" on your paystub is no different form the one marked "federal income tax" any more than the electrons in your GPU are the same as the ones in the CPU. And we are entitled to the benefits of air traffic control, food safety, schools etc. And in practice the SSN money does work that way: how do you think it's "invested"? It buys government bonds.

It's a cumbersome fiction, with rich kabuki elements (I myself appreciate the wasteful "statements" that some idiotic congressman decided should be sent to every recipient). Claiming you paid for it so you were entitled to it was a clever idea.

This crazy system arrived because the model people had was private pensions; many people didn't or couldn't invest in them so the Roosevelt administration developed "a pension fund for everyone" in the face of stiff opposition. It was very similar to the difficulty of implementing Obamacare: the whole ludicrous infrastructure was designed to bring insurance companies into the system rather than sit beside them. So SS is much more efficient than Obamacare because the opposition wasn't as effective back in the early 1930s.

This whole "you paid for it" scheme has other pathologies as well: the tax is regressive. The people who need it pay a higher proportion of their income than the people who don't. That's just cruel.

[stale2002]

The reason why "You paid for it" is a valid argument is that Social Security is explicitly advertised as a forced retirement system.

Imagine if you put money into your 401k, and then the government came along and decided that you didn't need that money so they just took it all away from you. Do you believe THAT would be OK?

Because if SS is a retirement system, that's effectively what the government would be doing.

[gumby]

Your argument is circular: it was advertised as X so it is X.

I described why it was advertised that way and it is operated to resemble that, but that is not in fact how it operates.

In fact I do think it is ludicrous that the US government will pay me SS money when I get old, even through I certainly won't need it. But I am glad they will do so because people have a screwed up model of how things work, so if they have to pay a bunch of people who don't need it in order to make sure those who do need it get their money, well, it's worth the cost. But what a waste. How much better not pay Bill Gates an SS payment and give it to someone else who needs it more?

You should be more outraged that a huge chunk of your taxes is wasted on beating up random people in other countries rather than fixing the bridges or giving it to people who are suffering. You should be more outraged that you are told that ISIS is some sort of existential threat to the republic, which is of course absolute nonsense.

How about the fact that the US created and underwrites all the "conforming" mortgages (i.e. essentially all of them outside a few pockets like the Bay Area and Manhattan). Another program from the 1930s that is taken for granted today with a cover myth a private mortgage market.

Look, I'm no flat-earther, gold-standarder, or conspiracy theory loony. I am hugely in favor of SS payments, welfare, Obamacare, FDA, etc etc -- in fact I think they should be stronger. But if you read history and some of the original debates and documents from the Roosevelt administration it is clear they are good medicine wrapped in a sugar coating of fakery in propaganda in order to get them implemented.