I just had an idea I want to share. (I will need help from an accountant, or MBA or economist to fill in the money details, or to tell me where my thinking is wrong...)

What if, instead of the current Social Security system, we consider the following:

Let's say that every time a baby Citizen is born in America it causes "A Citizen's Account" (ACA) to be set up, into which is paid some determined amount of money ($X), which can't be touched for some number of years (#Y), which would be sufficient to pay an equivalent amount that current SS recipients receive. Then, at working age, the worker pays off $X, and after paying it off once, they are free and clear, they will not have to pay into SS, as we do today, into an uncertain future.

Furthermore, the ACA payout will not be some $Trillions of dollars that we let the Chinese finance, and will exist in the monetary system, just as if it were "real" money, if any of it IS "real", ("In God We Trust, and this here little piece of paper, and a few organized electrons...").

So, would it work? Compound interest does wonders.

Of course, the government has never owned up to The People when it comes to SS. The funds are never put in a "lock box". The lock box is some office with cabinents overflowing with records of IOUs to the SS system.

Instead of trusting the government, we need an actual Trust Fund (ACA), which "real" dollars are put into.

If every dollar we all have had taken out of our paychecks to pay for SS (and Medicare) had not been put directly into the general fund and "spent", but instead had been used as gold reserves, for example, then SS would be fully funded and our generations to come will know these monies cannot be raided to pay for greed and corruption...

Lots of Citizens below the age of 50 think they will never see any money from the government in the form of SS, when they retire. They believe that they pay into a system that pays for yesterday's riders, but that won't pay off for them, the money won't be there.

The government wil undoubtedly try to "fix" the system by shoring up the current rules of bureaucracy instead of pay-as-you-go financing. If they do that, what I propose is that there be a future means test.

A "Means Test" in the current SS mess is fair, IMO.

For example, if my father had put money into the SS system in all his jobs through the years, and ended up being relatively rich, (we can debate the parameters), then he should be paid back everything he put in, with interest and inflation and so forth, and then that's it! The payments stop. He didn't need a gift from the government, so he doesn't get it, he got his money back!

But if my father worked his whole life, but for whatever reason (I think in his case, it was because the teaching profession has never been known for high pay), falls below a certain equity in life, then he should get the SS payment on time and guaranteed, because he paid for it!

Again, wouldn't this be fair? And wouldn't it help solve the hole that the government has dug itself?

One simple reform, which is demonstrably fair to all living and future generations.