Social Security or Social Disaster

Social Security is a controversial subject today. I wonder how many if not all the young workers even expect to get Social Social Security when they retire.
 
Since the time Social Security was established in 1935 to provide a floor for the workers owns savings or pensions, it has developed step by step into something far removed from the original idea. From 1935 through 1939 workers who retired before becoming fully insured, received a refund of their contribution plus interest.  However in 1939 our Congress in all of its "wisdom" canceled the refund provision and broadened Social Security to include dependents and surviving spouses.
 
Between 1937 and 1949 only 2 percent of the American payroll was taxed for Social Security, with a maximum payment of $60.00 per year. But by 1955 Social Security taxes had risen to $136.00 per year. In 1956 disability was added and in 1965 Medicare, by this almost everyone was covered.
 
All benefits and administrative cost are paid for by Social Security taxes which should be and at one time were put into a trust fund.
 
Trust Fund!  Now that has a nice ring to it doesn't it? Visions of a professionally managed, well invested instrument! However, since the refund provision was eliminated in 1939, today's workers must pay at least 10 years worth Social Security taxes to have the right to any benefit at all. IF a
worker, for some reason, falls as little as three months short of the ten year limit, they may receive no benefit at all. Some Trust Fund HUH??
 
From the original signing of the Social Security Act in 1935 ther has been a continual upward spiral of both Social Security taxes and benefits with no relief in sight. Most young workers today no longer believe they will ever receive any Social Security benefits; yet they are locked into the tax and our always loquacious Congress, ever looking to the next election, are afraid to touch this Sacred Cow. and it has become a political football.
 
There in lies the problem, so maybe it's time to take it out of the hands of , and as Pat Murphy said several years ago, "turn it over to private investment firms who have the experience to make an investment grow." At the very least create a semi-autonomous Government Corporation,  managed by actuaries who would be forbidden by law to meddle with the program or treat it like a political birthright.
 
Benefits of such a change could be manta, workers, particularly the younger workers might well have a better life and earlier realization of their financial dreams.  Business, especially small business, relieved of some of the heavy burden, may see their books go from red to black ink and show a profit, and some of it might even trickle down to the consumer.
 
One wonders if human nature has changed at all in the last two centuries. We have only to look at the bungling Federal budget deficit and the present threat of the collapse of Social Security to know it has NOT!!!
    
Social Security or Social Disaster? The choice is ours. We can stand by and watch the Social Security system collapse from it's own weight or we can take action by writing our representatives or confronting them at political meetings and telling them We are tired of their fiscal insanity!