The reason why I feel that I won’t receive SS is this:

When the baby boomers retire – which will be long before I do, the proportion of money going into SS vs money coming out of will be MUCH smaller than it is now.

Currently, what isn’t payed out to retirees of SS is put towards mitigating our nation’s debt, and has since SS conception.

Once this proportion flips, not only will there be not enough money generated by SS taxes itself to pay out to SS retirees, but there will be nothing to mitigate the deficit, and in turn SS will stop buffering the debt, but add to it. Exponentially.

Tell you what — I’ll believe that I’ll get a SS check when I see it.

Here are a list of reasons why:
1) We’re already starting to pay out more than we take in.
2) People are living longer and will collect benefits longer
3) We’re lowering social security taxes and taking even less in with lots of baby boomers getting ready to retire in the near future.
4) Our govt. has been borrowing from social security to pay for well almost anything they can pay for and putting IOU’s back in. We all know the govt never changes their minds about IOU’s or programs in general.
5) Diminishing returns on investments or times when the economy goes into a recession.

My list could go on and on but my opinion is that at some point the strain on social security will be to much and the govt will cancel it or try to pay out people in some form. As the social security populations increase and decrease (ages 65-70, 70-80, 80-90, 90+) certain groups won’t put up with lowering and raising social security pay outs. Those that are 70-80 only get 75% but 65-70 get 85%. I just don’t see social security making it. Had the govt kept their hands out of the pot social security would be booming and it would act like a pension plan.

@David, what would you like to have done with the trust fund surplus through the years? Would you just leave your SURPLUS savings in non interest bearing account for ever? That would be silly. So if you want to invest it, where would you invest? If you think about it, the safest investment for it would be US Government bonds isn’t it?

There have been several posters who referred to declining birth rates (fewer people paying into the system) contributing to the problems the system faces.

Allowing more legal, working-age immigrants into the country would be a solution to this issue. Currently the immigration system is a bureaucratic maze and doesn’t allow work visas for many who would like them. That’s part of why we have the illegal immigration problems we do. Making it easier to navigate and easier to come here to work or start a business legally could actually help fund programs like Medicare and SS.

While it contains benefits that might be construed as retirement benefits, it’s actually structured as an INSURANCE program. In fact, it’s often referred to as OASDI, meaning Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance. It’s essentially a significant insurance policy against growing older than your assets will allow you to live a decent lifestyle, against the income earners in your household of dying young, and against a long-term disability preventing you from working.

If you’re a certain category of state employee (including most school teachers and university employees), you WON’T get Social Security because you’ve been trapped in your state pension system instead.

Apparently I was six months short of being eligible for any kind of Social Security benefits when my first (corporate) employer crashed and burned in the dot-com bust. My next job was at a state university, where we can’t pay into Social Security, and we can’t make up the years of pay we put into the university system if we ever end up going back to the corporate world. My state’s pension system is currently only 60% funded and there are rumblings about calling it bankrupt and letting us all fend for ourselves with neither a state pension nor Social Security.

For those of us who can’t rely on the federal government and have to depend the states that employ us (several of which are on the verge of insolvency this year, as opposed to 30 years down the road), we wish we had Social Security’s “problems.”

SS pays for disability, and those applications are on the rise.

Yes, you will initially be denied, no matter how severe your disability, but if you hire an attorney and jump through the paperwork hoops you will eventually qualify for SS disability.

A big benefit of SS disability is Medicare eligibility within 24 months (immediately for some diseases)

The above is another HUGE drain on SS few discuss.

So

Now, inflation is another concern, but as long as the dollar is the reserve currency, the US can pretty much print away. Even right now, with the US debt at very high levels, there are *deflation* concerns, not inflation concerns. Treasury yields are falling as investors around the world look to them as the safest investment. Not a lot of signs that the market is worried about the devaluation of the dollar.

Can you imagine a scenario in which the US pays out Social Security benefits to someone and the check bounces?

I think the reason those of us in our mid to late 20s don’t believe we’ll get anything from SS is that we’ve been hearing about these potential not-so-painful solutions at least as long as we’ve been able to vote, but nobody’s actually gone through with them. With each passing year of government inaction, the numbers look more grim.

But there is no panic. We’re calmly and realistically planning for our futures with no (or very small, very late) Social Security benefits.

I do not believe the program will ever disappear, it is to politically favorable. However, I saw someone else post this somewhere above, according to the SS website 67 is the maximum age to get ‘full’ benefits, however, I remember getting many forms from the administration saying 72 was my ‘full’ benefits age.

Similarly a couple people mentioned a coup of some sort, and I do not believe this is out of the range of possibility given our governments current job.

That isn’t true but whatever makes it easier to look at that $$$ gone each pay.

It is better to assume no return and still save. I don’t want to be eating dog food when I retire. If SS is around, maybe I can use that money to travel.

The die has been cast. Ever since the program was started, and benefits were paid to people who never contributed to the system, it was inevitable that the program must either eventually collect from people who will never be paid, or continue forever. The political no-brainer is to keep the system going forever. I can’t think of any better way to guarantee a 1-term presidency than to preside over the Congress that killed Social Security (while still asking the current crop of workers to keep paying). The alternative would be to simply flick a switch and terminate both contributions and benefits simultaneously, immediately condemning millions of retirees (read: voters) to poverty. Equally politically suicidal.

Don’t give in to scare-mongering. Social security is not going anywhere. At some point in the next 30 years, yes, they might raise the retirement age another year or two. Or, they might bump up your FICA deductions by a percent or two. Or, they might even raise the income cap a few thousand dollars. But here’s the kicker: any one of those solutions would solve the problem, and none of those solutions sound particularly painful or dire to me. So what’s with all the panic?

For those who haven’t read it, I believe Nicole is referring to this column:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16krugman.html?ref=paulkrugman

Nicole, care to elaborate on that? Because I think Krugman pretty much nailed it.

There may be issues with Social Security, but the bigger issue is social insecurity. Fear. And worse, resigning ourselves to the myth that it’s just going to go broke or disappear somehow. There are people pushing this myth precisely because they want it to happen.

Balderdash. It’s based on having the willpower to demand that this basic social insurance program be preserved.

Social Security is the law of the land. It’s not going to disappear unless the Federal government abolishes it, and that’s why we need to pay attention to what it is and how it really works.

Assuming that you can put your money into private investments and be guaranteed enough to retire on – now that’s *much* more of an assumption based on chance!

A lot of people learned that the hard way over the last couple of years. A lot of people learned that the hard way in 1933. That’s part of why we *got* Social Security.

Of course, we can do our best to calculate *just how much of a chance it is* based on the market’s past performance. That’s what we all try to do, if we invest. But things happen: market scares, recessions, depressions. We can’t always predict them.