First: Social security is solvent, it will be solvent for years, and to fix it will require a minor tax increase decades from now. Quit believing propaganda.
Second: Our future budgetary problems are nonetheless real. But they are all about health care. If you really want to worry about balancing budgets in 2040, worry about that. Social Security is fine and will continue to be fine unless somebody deliberately fucks it up. (By talking like a fatalist, as you do, you inadvertently help the cause of the people who are trying to fuck it up; that is why we are having this little chat.)
Third: The major problem in the USA today is that we have a massive excess of productive capacity. Not only can the country afford to feed, clothe, house, and entertain you quite nicely, but our biggest problem is that after we did this we might still have too much capacity. The economy is not well designed for such a situation, and it needs fixing.
(Aside: The fix is called "stimulus", literally known as "printing money". People won't spend money? Make them spend it now. Create new money and give it away; make the old money move by threatening to inflate it away in the future. That nobody in power understands this, or that they pretend not to, is an epic failure of education and/or governance; the consequence will be millions of impoverishments and, likely, early deaths, perhaps even your own. Tragedy sucks.)
To the extent that the country does not choose to feed, clothe, house, and entertain you and everyone around you, it is a problem of government, economics, and politics. It is not that we are physically incapable. It is that we are not so organized.
The solution is to organize.
Where will "the money" come from? Money is not a physical thing, like platinum. It's some numbers in a spreadsheet by which we keep score: If your number is higher, you get to control more about what the economy does.
If you wake up and discover that all the money belongs to a handful of people who have gamed the ruleset by which money is distributed, and that they are failing to use their giant pile of money to direct the economy to keep everyone else fed, clothed, housed, and entertained to the correct extent: You change the rules, or you stop playing the game.
By many orders of magnitude, the best option is to change the rules. Or, rather, to change one rule, to turn one knob that was designed to be turned: Raise taxes on the people with the money.
That anyone contemplates suicide rather than go down fighting for this simple rule change is a triumph of modern propaganda.
Get up out of the fetal position and be an American, for the love of all that is holy.
Do you think that every rich person has simply gamed the system and that none of them have actually earned their money? To make a blanket accusation against every rich person and simply say that their taxation is the cure is nowhere close to being an American.
Solvent in the sense that next month's check won't bounce? Or solvent in the sense that if it were an independent entity entitled to its current revenue streams, and nothing else, you'd happily buy someone's future SS income at 100 cents on the dollar?
Or, wait, solvent in the sense that if I had a balance sheet that looked like theirs, and I made the promises they make, I wouldn't be going to jail?
http://www.brookings.edu/multimedia/video/2009/0514_social_s...
It's dangerous to have entities for which the clock is running out. What we should aim for is the opposite: a social security system that's gradually accumulating assets, and can eventually use that to offload its risks (by, for example, paying a life insurance company to assume some of its obligations).
That way, 1) we know how much things cost, and 2) our problems are gradually getting solved. Now, we have the opposite situation.
No offense really, but some people can't extrapolate their own personality even 5 years ahead. Trust me, you will change with age, everybody does. Hopefully it won't be too late to start saving then...
My present self is cursing my 20s self for having spent a load of time traveling and running up lifestyle inflation debts, basically boozing it up non-stop.
On the other hand, I have some really good experiences and memories.
But I've been incredibly focused on reducing debt and building equity for the past year or so, and I don't see that changing.
I'm just glad I woke up while I still have 35 years to repair the damage, I have my health, live in a country with affordable healthcare, etc.
This whole model of slaving away your healthy years in the hope you'll still have the savings and the strength to enjoy life after 70 seems like a scam to me. My plan is to work less each year but keep on working. This isn't so bad if you do work you enjoy.
He could be the Astor of Curaçao!
In the south of Brazil you won't find many bargains left, but I've read that lots os europeans are buying houses in the northeast (the infrastructure is a lot worse there, but it's 3.000km closer to Europe).
Please look at Europe and Canada. They have their problems, sure, but they take care of their old and sick. And they do it with less money!
You will get the medical care you need, and won't go without food, shelter and basic care.