They don’t build tsunamis with past generations’ money, do they?

A couple of years ago we wrote a piece for Investopedia about the inevitable self-destruction of Social Security. Here are the opening couple of paragraphs:

Ben Franklin’s most enduring axiom states that only death and taxes are inevitable. The byproduct of the two, Social Security, might not be.

Social Security, officially the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program, was founded in 1935. Like many political disasters, Social Security began with the best of intentions. President Franklin Roosevelt created it to guarantee workers an income once they retired. The rationale, if unspoken, was straightforward: private citizens couldn’t be trusted to save for retirement, so a forced savings plan administered by bureaucrats would do it for them.

Now if that doesn’t lure you in, nothing will. Go there and read it, and thank us for overworking ourselves to the point that we have to recycle old posts in between bouts of writing groundbreaking new pieces that will forever change public attitudes concerning personal finance. This really is God’s work that we’re doing. Thanks for reading it.