Social Security is a fund that workers have paid into and not everyone lives to collect but it is

[customerserviceguy]

10. Yes, it has all kinds of features

that real insurance would never have, that have allowed it to get to the dire situation it is that much faster.

Most of the really early SS retirees got many, many times back what they and their employers paid in taxes. Each generation it becomes a little less generous, until we have today, where most in the baby boom generation (who have paid collectively the most in FICA taxes) will be lucky to break even, even if they live beyond their current life expectancies, and the government manages to print enough money to pay them throughout.

Social Security was a far-thinkiing concept in the mid-30's, but it depended on the kind of perpetual growth that Americans thought was possible until about the 1970's. The baby bust after the baby boom doomed it to the condition we see it in today.