There is a conflict of interest between the generations, because the amount that retired people can take out depends on the amount that working people pay in. The American Association of Retired Persons has already become powerful by organizing older people around their self-interest. The generational conflict is bound to get worse when baby boomers retire, because the number of retired people will increase dramatically, and because baby boomers have never been noted for unselfishness. Now life expectancy is 75. When Social Security began, population was growing rapidly, so there was always a larger working generation to pay for the retired generation., but now population growth is slower, and when the baby boomers retire, the number of people on Social Security will soar.
Liberals answer that there is no real crisis.
Minor changes, such as raising the retirement age to 67 and raising the payroll tax by 1 or 2 percent, could keep the Social Security system solvent indefinitely. They argue these details, and they never question the old left's faith that centralized systems should take care of everyone. Conservatives want to replace Social Security with tax-sheltered individual retirement accounts, invested in the stock market. And Progressives have no ideas at all about reforming Social Security, and want to keep the current top-heavy system. Like most conservative proposals, the plans for individual retirement accounts would do most to benefit people with high incomes, who can put enough money into these accounts to retire in luxury, while lower income people would save less and barely get by.