Worth a read.
“Though I grant you we rarely discuss it in these terms, Security creates a strong link between the aged and the working-age population. The idea behind the program is that today’s workers create the capital, the technology, and the wealth that will support tomorrow’s generation. Embedded in its mind-numbing formulas is the notion that those of us who came before, whether they were teachers, accountants, homemakers, mail carriers, barbers, cashiers, or lawyers, have built up the productive capacity of our nation.
When the children of these workers come of age (along with new immigrants), they will earn their living from this infrastructure while also making their own contributions. As they do so, we will peel off some portion of their earnings to provide pensions for their forebears, just as those forebears did for their own predecessors. If this were a Disney movie, music about the “Circle of Life” would swell up here, but suffice it to say, Social Security is an elegant collaborative solution to a universal challenge.”
