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

[customerserviceguy]

45. And I have opinions about those certificates

As for your point #1, that promise to pay is only as good as the willingness of present and future US governments to do what is necessary to pay them backl. There are an awful lot of mortgages out there secured by homes that are worth far less than the face value of the underlying notes. Many of them are not going to be paid off if the borrower chooses to walk away from the debt. You have far more faith in those pieces of paper than I do.

As for #2, it's term insurance, not whole life insurance with a cash value. Every dime you or I, or anybody reading my words had taken out of our paychecks went to pay current beneficiaries. Not a single penny went into "an account" for us. It's gone, simply gone, and we are dependent on the prosperity and generousity of future generations if they feel like they still think it's a good deal. Romney and Ryan are going to do everything they can to convince undecided younger (and middle aged) voters that it's not a good deal. Polls show they have a head start:



From: http://www.gallup.com/poll/141449/six-workers-hold-no-hope-receiving-social-security.aspx

And that was two years ago, when the recession was still pretty young, and there was hope that we could pull out of it.

I agree that tweaks will be needed, but they will not be considered trivial by the people who get tweaked. We need for the President to tell us what his tweaks will be, so that we can compare them up to Romney-Ryan.