The question that no one is asking, much less answering, is what happened to the money in our Social Security Fund? Since 1936, when the fund was implemented, millions of Americans, many of whom did not live long enough to reap its benefits, have been contributing to it. If after 74 years of compulsory contributions, totaling trillions of dollars, the Fund is on the verge of going broke, then it's not unreasonably to assume that most of those trillions have been siphoned off.
As Adam Smith noted in the Wealth of Nations, “During the most profound peace, various events occur which require extraordinary expense, and government finds it always more convenient to defray this expense by misapplying the sinking fund than by imposing a new tax. Every new tax is immediately felt more or less by the people. It occasions always some murmur, and meets with some opposition. . . To borrow of the sinking fund is always an obvious and easy expedient for getting out of the present difficulty.” (Book Five, Chapter Three)
So, before embarking on yet more debates on Social Security, our leaders need to come clean on what became of the trillions in the Fund. How was the money used, to defray the cost of undeclared wars? Government Perks? Pork? Corporate welfare? Bribes to foreign despots? All the above?
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