Why entitlements will crush the U.S. and other countries

foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/26/children-conceived-AFTER-death-parent-face-uphill-battle-SS-inheritance-rights

UFDA, for heavens sake. That Social Security is even considered as an inheritance right is messed up right there. I went looking on the web and both a surviving spouse and a surviving child can receive 75% of the benefits the worker would have gotten (if they were of retirement age I'm guessing) If there is more then 1 kid benefits are "capped" at 150-180% of what the workers benefits would have been. OK this is what it is and no one wants kids to suffer financial hardship if mom or dad suddenly dies. But to say that Uncle Sugar should give these same very generous benefits for a child that is CONCEIVED up to TWO YEARS after the worker died? I'm sorry but if you want your genes to go on that badly buy some life insurance to provide for the possible future kidlet, don't expect that the already overwhelmed taxpayers needs to provide for a FUTURE child conceived from your banked sperm. And if mom is choosing to have a kid with your banked sperm she needs to expect to support it herself whether by her earnings or whatever insurance and estate you left her. Frankly I think its incredible CHUTZPA for these women to think they should get their SS inheritance benefits doubled in these cases.

Yeah I'm heartless, this is a small small # and especially if dad died serving in the military the county could pay for kidlet --well i'd donate for that case but I STILL don't want it to be automatic bennies. BUT the real problem is that when one does a web search for SS benefits for children the 100's of hits DONT even include survivor benefits, its all about getting SSI money. Ummm, isn't SSI for people who are disabled and cant work? Kids don't work anyway so why do their parents need SSI money? Yeah yeah I'm heartless again, don't I want special needs kids to be able to get special services so they maybe can overcome their disabilities and be productive adults. Well what makes us think the parents are spending the SSI monies on that? This is not a voucher program for services its just handing unrestricted money to parents and guardians who know how to milk the bureaucratic systems.

Oh and even people who are generally conservative and UNDERSTAND that the country is boned but are close to age to draw SS retirement benefits are strongly opposed to cutting the benefits they've been 'paying into' for FORTY years eleventy!

Well as an engineer I am not wired to accept 'there is no solution'. IMO the only way this country can possibly get a handle on its budget is to immediately start (or possibly increase I haven't checked) raising the eligibility age for SS and to put in some kind of means testing that moves eligibility for 'wealthy retirees' back an extra bit of time (again this needs to be a gradual 1 or 2 months a year up to 2-4 years older than general retirees deal). I think this is the only fix that may be politically possible to do. I agree with people who think the system is inherently flawed but as far as I can tell one either lets the government implode under its debt and its 'owed' entitlements and then everyone who survived the chaos has to fend for themselves or we reduce the # of people we are supporting to where we can continue the flawed system and we should expect to keep raising eligibility ages as needed. We also NEED to reform SSI. We could start by making child SSI benefits a voucher card that can only be redeemed for stuff like therapy (speech, motor skills etc) and tutoring. If we don't start reforming SSI the soon to be seniors will never allow needed SS and medicare reforms.

Oh and medicare eligibility has to be indexed to FULL SS eligibility. It is currently 65 even though SS has been raised to 67 or 68. Again, gradually raise the age -probably only 1 month per year could fly politically.