Quote Originally Posted by KukriKhan View Post
A perfect problem-solving answer. Bravo!
I would have "saved" it by phasing it out. Workers under a certain age could divert their contributions to private retirement accounts, while their employer contributions could have been used to continue paying for those currently recieving benefits and those soon to be recieving benefits. The idea would be for Social Security to have a nice, soft landing while going away insteading cratering- like it's going to.

Of course, I said "would have" saved it- because now that it's running in the red, I don't really see any other end to it than to crash & burn. The fact that it's projected to happen before I'll collect a dime for it is kinda sad.....

Quote Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
make it illegal to remove any money from the program period.
What money? There isn't any. The government has "borrowed" all the money that's in the trust fund and replaced it with treasury bonds. Now that Social Security is running in the red, the government has to start paying out those IOUs in order to continue paying benefits. Naturally, the only way for the government to pay those bonds is to sell more bonds (debt) to China, Japan, ect. I know it's cliche, but just imagine if we ran our personal finances so irresponsibly.