that no one who does physically demanding jobs will ever achieve.

These ivory tower ideologues don't deserve to be merely defeated, they need to be utterly humiliated followed by tar and feathering and put on a plane to the exile of their choice.

I despise those contemptible assholes.

There, they revel in the utter lack of government. And we can revel in the absence of their stupidity.

The reason it works is because new funds come into it constantly.

It's called my 401k, my IRA, and other savings. I also expect the government one that I am currently paying into. I don't know how we can suddenly say that one generation gets it and another one doesn't.

dismiss that history for people up to 54 years old! It is unconscionable to do this! Especially when they want to increase defense spending, not cut it, at a time when we will hopefully be almost done with these Repug wars. WTF!

GOP admits under 55 you get screwed but not to worry if you are over 55. The problem is married couple share expenses so even though the one over 55 is OK the younger spouse gets screwed which screws both because as a married couple they share expenses. It also make it extremely difficult to plan ahead if one is currently over 55 and the spouse is under 55, will it be retroactive? Not everyone has a lot of extra cash, some have very little savings and primarily depend on Social Security & Medicare.

It still makes me angry, I remember the headlines before 9/11/2001 and later how they said no one had to sacrifice for the Iraq war, knowing all we would be expected to pay in the end:

U.S. taps Social Security reserves 08/16/2001
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/august01/2001-08-16-social-security.htm

Surplus all but gone, but promises remain 08/27/2001
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/august01/2001-08-28-surplus.htm

One of the weird things about this is:

I'm 52, nearly 53 and I'm supposed to accept that my older sisters (7 and 5 years older) should get it but one of my sisters and myself (52 and 53) should be denied what we paid into our whole lives?

How will that play out in families across the country?

and initiate means testing to further divide us.

Instead of letting us have our Social Security as is. Funding its extension by military budget trimming. (Doing more of the work in-house would be my choice, if we're serious about savings. And if Lyan wants to see some cronyism, military privatization has been riddled with it.)

until they finally get their way.

My 401K has dropped by 50% over the years thanks to your fancy market manipulation. If I depended on that I'd be living on handouts under a freeway overpass.

I can't voice the contempt I have for Republicans.

Must go look for another bottle of Two Buck Chuck.

One thing I'll hand to Ryan, he spelled out clearly that the GOP agenda is to gut SS and a woman's right to choose.

Probably not what the ticket wanted to see him do last night. Ooops!

that means the future ones are screwed.

This is a common union-busting tactic: give the current group just enough to make them happy in exchange for them throwing future groups under the bus.

...society ends up with a person who needs a safety net.

What happens when some whiz kid who thinks he knows more than anyone how to make his SS payments blossom into a retirement account learns he's not as smart as he thought? What if he gets cheated out of the bulk of it by Wall Street hustlers? Then he approaches old age with nothing, and requires the rest of us to step up and provide social security.

Obviously, those who choose privatization will only be allowed to spend the money they put away for themselves. This is a not so clever ruse to extract people from the system to ultimately phase it out for everyone else. Who could have seen that coming, from Republicans no less! Hahaha

Paul Rand is full of malarkey.