Unintended consequences of social security

I think social security is digging it's own grave.

That being said, my comments here are not by any means authoritative or condemning. I've just been thinking about this and thought I'd write it out to see what others might think.

It is my understanding that social security was created as a result of great financial stress; as a way for those who could no longer provide for themselves, to be sustained.

It is also my understanding that when it was first implemented that there were close to 10 employed workers per 1 citizen "on" social security and that now that ratio is approaching 1:1.

Maybe this seems obvious to everyone else, but in case it's not. I suspect that the reason this ratio is has been degrading is because over time people came to depend less on their children in retirement and as a result had less children.

In many cultures (and probably in pre-social security America) people's retirement plan involved having enough children that one or more would take care of them when they "retired". I propose that this tendency declined as a result of the attitude "I'll always have my social security". And how this system came to fail was there never came into being an understanding that all social security did was turn the younger generation's responsibility of taking care of the older an insurance like duty rather than a family matter. The key point being, in both systems you need ample children for it to work.

Now we have become accustom to having fewer children but still expecting to be taken care of.

It's sort of like borrowing, people live without the work of raising as many children but still need the longterm results.