Whenever people talk about how Social Security needs to be cut, I think of a story that goes something like this:
Imagine you run a lemonade stand downtown. People give you money, you promise to give them lemonade when they need it, and you use the money to buy lemons and sugar to make lemonade, which you then give to the people for refreshment on those hot summer days.....
Your lemonade stand becomes immensely successful. Everyone in town is giving you money so they can get some lemonade when it gets hot. You become one of the biggest businesses in town.
Now imagine that the smaller local business start running short on cash. They ask to borrow money from you so that they can stay in business and keep paying their employees. You agree to this; after all, if those other businesses can't pay their employees, you sure can't get paid for lemonade. You know you'll get the money back; they've always paid people back in the past. And you'll earn a little interest on these loans.
But then you realize those businesses you loaned money to have been cutting their prices so much that the money they're taking in doesn't cover their costs. It's a little worrisome, but you figure that eventually you'll realize that they need to get their prices back up to where they used to be so they can cover their costs and pay you back. In the mean time, they're borrowing from the town down the road.
Meanwhile, the weather report says there are going to be more hot days ahead. You're thinking you might need to raise prices yourself. Maybe lower the big-spender discount you've been giving, maybe even eliminate it entirely. You're starting to think that those big-spenders really don't need a discount anyway.
Finally these businesses that borrowed from you decide that their debt situation has reached a crisis point. They fear that they may not be able to repay the money they borrowed from you. But they see that you've become a large business, and you're handing out all this lemonade. They see that you're looking at ways to deal with those hot days coming up. And they have just the solution: you just reduce the amount of lemonade you give people, and use the money people paid you for lemonade to pay off those loans you made to the other businesses.
You're not so sure this is quite a fair deal, are you? And the people who've paid for their hot-day lemonade probably don't like it either. But no matter how much you try to explain that their problem is that their own prices are too low, not that you're giving people what they paid you for, you're more and more being treated like the scapegoat. And they still owe you money!
Now imagine that your lemonade stand is called Social Security.