>>Unlike a Ponzi scheme there is no intent to defraud anyone.

One of the more recent studies showed that a citizen turning 65 in 2013 will have received $327,500 more in government benefits than they paid federal taxes over their lifetime, while future unborn children can expect to receive $421,600 LESS in benefits than they pay in.

"Generational theft" is a common description. Oldsters ought not to lecture others about saving or owning assets until they write a check for the $327,500 they underpaid. The tragedy is that oldsters fiercely minimized their own taxes over the years when invested surplus $ would have built a mighty fund. By way of example, had US taxpayers contributed to SS as did the Australians, SS would have a $100T-$200T surplus: enough to guarantee payments for Peters and Paulas essentially forever. Seems to me that even if shunting the burden onto the young is fair, meddling with payrol taxes is unlikely to cover the problem as more baby boomers retire and there are fewer and fewer workers to shoulder the burden.

>>Right now a billionaire pays the same amount of money into Social Security as someone who makes $118,500 a year.

Fair point, except that billionaires already minimise their income exposed to payrol tax and can simply shrug at removal of a cap. You'd need to widen the tax platform for this to work.

As usual the issue is that a way to cover the extra $327,500 ought to have been sorted out when today's recipients were paying their "share" rather than waiting until they've finished their obligations before imposing the burden on everybody else. That's the key characteristic of the Ponzi scheme and of caricature Socialists: no consideration that paying out today's receipts to today's beneficiaries without any sort of underwriting, only works if there's an infinite number of Peters/suckers. There's not, and offshoring of so many jobs by those billionaires you mention is a bigger contribution to the problem.

But you only have to compare SS to the $47T Medicare deficit to see what deserves the crown for Socialistic spending to an extent that's almost unpayable now.