A couple whom I know just reached "retirement age". Despite my warnings (years ago), they were banking on Social Security to help them have a comfortable retirement. Now the reality strikes: due in part to an error that Social Security made, and in part on not being informed of some bureaucratic rules, they will get substantially less than they had planned on, and will only barely scrape by. That's assuming that the entire ponzi scheme doesn't collapse in the next few years.
When they told me of this development, I refrained from saying "I told you so" (even if I thought it loudly). It is very sad that some people have fallen for the lies of a socialist system instead of planning for an independent retirement strategy. Of course, the money they could have invested was reduced by a very large amount; stolen by the state during their entire careers to pay off the previous retirees.
The Social "Security" scheme can't keep going. No politicians are willing to admit that to those of you who are counting on that money, after being told your entire life that the money was being taken "for your retirement". It wasn't. That was a bald-faced lie calculated to buy your vote. There is no bank account in your name that the money is going into. You are basing your retirement plans on having enough young, working people for the government to steal from to keep paying you. That is a faulty supposition.
Listen: If you must have a job that enables the theft of your money to pay into "the system", please have the foresight to count that money as lost. Make other, realistic plans to finance your sunset years if you don't want to be working at a minimum wage job when you are eighty.
