Honoring the promises made is a lot like the genie that gives you 3 wishes and then when you wish for a car, your dad dies and you inherit a car. And other mischievous things genies do, where they give you what you asked for but not in the way you were expecting.

Our promises re: social security, medicare/medicaid, and other entitlement programs, are so large at this point that the only way to honor them, especially in the future as the lifespan increases and there will be more and more people at retirement age, in addition to the skyrocketing price of healthcare -- the only way to honor those prices will be to inflate the currency to the point where yes, you receive a monthly check for $1000 from SocSec as promised, but that only buys a loaf of bread, a carton of eggs, and a gallon of gasoline.

Far better is to accept that we're in a prisoner's dilemma type of situation where no one wants to be the bad guy but because nobody will step up we're screwing ourselves and we're all the bad guys -- and just get rid of the system entirely.  In my mind, the ideal compromise would be to fulfill the promises of people already in the system, but starting TODAY allow people to opt out of social security by forfeiting all their accumulated benefits but also no longer have money deducted from their paychecks for the purpose of SocSec.

Let us opt out today!  I would gladly give up all the SS benefits I've accrued in my life if I could simply not have to pay into the ponzi scheme of SS going forward.