But then again, I'm not exactly normal.
I'm a human who isn't straight (unlike between 70 and 90 percent of the population, depending on which study you cite), a college student (here in Australia, we call them universities) who isn't young....you understand, I'm sure. Therefore, my debut as a diarist here on DKos will be typically atypical of me.
I was reading FLFJ's excellent diary entry, and - as I have for some days now - decided to make a reply. However, it turned out to be rather a longish one, so I've decided to make it a bit longer, and turn it into a general dissertation on retirement programs and their viability. Here goes:
When the odious Rick Santorum says the declining payer/payee ratio for Social Security is a matter which threatens the program's viability, he's at least partly right. While the issue can be postponed for about another decade beyond the currently-projected fail date of 2037 by lifting the cap on payroll taxes, it really must be addressed in some systemic form if SocSec is to remain viable indefinitely.
The program was designed in the 30s, when America's age pyramid was, well, a pyramid. Today, it more closely resembles a barrel, and that has all sorts of ramifications, one of which is the viability of retirement and social safety net programs. One possible solution is to means-test Social Security. Another is to raise the retirement age (less in favour of that one, for a variety of reasons).
Other countries have dealt with this issue (assuming they saw it coming) in a variety of ways.
Australia was smart enough (thankyew kindly, Mr. Keating!) to put in compulsory superannuation payments (employer and employee) back in the 1990s and to regulate the funds which were allowed to touch these - barring another Great Depression, our elderly should be fine without needing to take our (means-tested) old age pension in sufficient number to stress the Commonwealth's public finances.
(As an example, I ran a simulation on the Public Service's fund, putting in my graduate's salary for if I get straight into it after finishing my Master's in June - I get an annual payout of $40k (2011 dollars) for 20 years after I retire at - hypothetically - 65. Not bad, ey?)
Canada already had a Pension Plan since the mid-60s, and it appears to be working out about as well as Australia's more private-sector one - it started earlier, but we've had a boom economy to help us catch up. Either way, Canadian workers don't fear senior destitution any more than Australian workers do.
Britain (the home of the old age pension, which started in 1909 there) is in far worse case. The system appears to be (for lack of a better term) arcane in its complexities, and there was no dedicated revenue stream set up to fund it. While the UK has set up parts of the Australian and Canadian systems in an effort to address the problem fairly, most of their pension arrangements are incentivised private arrangements (with the loose regulation this implies) and not the across-the-board scheme of the other systems. Also, the typical contribution rate is only 6%, which will bite UK seniors in the backside come about 2030 (they're already setting up an increase in the eligible age for the pension in Britain).
The point of all this rambling? There are valid alternatives to the system run by Social Security. They can be based in the private-sector (Australia) or the public-sector (Canada), and they can work out just fine if done properly, with lots and lots of safeguards and regulations on the pension funds. They could consist of some method of limiting payouts (e.g., means-testing), or based on raising extra revenue to stash aside for the job, or some combination of the two. However, Santorum's most likely "solution" to Social Security's demographic woes - privatise, deregulate, dismantle - is no solution at all. It merely transfers the misery from tomorrow's workers to tomorrow's elderly, who have spent 10-20-30 years paying into the system, only to be told by the GOP that they've torn it down so it can't pay them back.
Not to mention that, while those demographic challenges are real (if a tad exaggerated by Republicans), Social Security is (as mentioned earlier) fully paid up to about 2037 before it has to go outside of its own assets to fund its obligations. There is time to come up with a viable, properly-thought-out fix, rather than panicking, which is certainly not the impression that Republicans have been assiduously trying to create. Indeed, one might even say that they've done such things as describing Social Security as a "Ponzi Scheme" in order to drum up a false sense of panic from which to benefit politically.
I believe that there's a term for this. I believe that it's called "fraud". Possibly - given the nature of Republican donors - "fraud for personal and political gain". Whoever the GOP nominee in 2012's Presidential contest turns out to be, in this climate it's a given that they'll be batshit, and that they'll be on the record saying something batshit about Social Security. Democrats should use that (and I hope they will) to not only defeat them, but to turn them into an albatross around every other GOPer's neck in 2012.
I can only hope.