Coberly replies:

absolutely right.

no one ought to try to live on SS who isn’t already pretty good at living on nothing.

but that’s pretty much the point: SS is insurance… you set aside the least amount of money you can in order to guarantee at least the lowest possible standard of living you can stand “if all else fails.”

and it turns out that for a lot of people who never thought it would happen to them, all else does fail.

as for the greater returns from equities etc. yep.

that’s the risk premium. i encourage people to invest and not rely on SS. but keep that old SS anyway. Just in case.

And I am still not sure that a “no SS, EVERYONE invested in the stock market” could work as well as “every worker has SS, those who can afford the risk invest in stocks.” this has something to do with the fallacy of composition. is there really some place to put all that money that will generate real “growth” or will future profits on your investments come out of lower wages and higher prices…?

By the way, I never missed my SS “tax.” I think you have to be a specially ..uh..money oriented kind of person to notice the payroll tax.. or to have been whipped up into hysteria by people claiming it is being stolen from you.