Absolutely not. The program was never designed for individuals to actually have retirement savings managed by the government; that would have introduced two major flaws. The first being that inflation would eat up a large portion of that savings in real dollars, and the second being that everyone above a median age would have still been left to fend for themselves. Social Security was designed so that present workers donations would cover the majority of retirees benefit expense in present-day dollars. Then when those workers retire, after having paid their fair share into the program, other workers would cover their benefit expense. Some adjustments were made to build a surplus for a time to prepare for the baby-boomers, but that surplus became too tempting for later administrations and Congress and they "used" those revenues to pay for part of their tax cuts. Now the blame Social Security for their fiscal crisis instead of admitting it was the tax cuts made for political reasons, as well as those I spelled out earlier designed specifically to destroy Social Security. By making Social Security "voluntary" it would take revenues from the plan necessary to care for present retirees.
Data countering the claim that Reagan "increased" revenues.
Look Here Kennedy reduced the upper income rate from 91% to 70%. I will admit that Eisenhower's 91% was excessive, and that changing it to 70% likely motivated investment. Reagan, on the other hand, cut that 70% upper rate to 28% by 1986. Imagine cutting your income from say $35,000 to $14,000. What would it do to your household budget? I will admit that that analogy is simplistic, since Reagan also increased other taxed during his latter years, reducing the damage done. Bush did not.
The truth is that the bush tax cuts wiped out a balanced budget and a budget surplus, and drove us into deep deficits in less than two years of his presidency. He then continued to drive the nails deeper.
The goal of "starve the beast" was always to create such a deep fiscal crisis that the destruction of social programs could be achieved. Actually many believe that it goes much farther. If you look at the move for states to turn over city management to private businesses, removing power from local elected officials, it is but one example. There are others, but I will not begin to list them this time of night. Our fiscal crisis was a Republican strategy, not poor management. They viewed these deficits as beneficial to their goals. Don't you recall the quotes, "Some deficits are good."? So is it the ultimate goal to change our republic into an oligarchy? I don't know, but it is possible.
