Social Security

I recently received correspondence from AARP about Social Security with the headline: “It’s OUR money — always has been, always will be.” In fact, in June 2026 AARP itself quoted Bill Sweeney, Senior Vice President for Government Affairs, saying, “Social Security is money we’ve earned, we’ve paid for, throughout our working lives.

I believe that these statements are misleading, and I assume AARP knows that Social Security does not actually work that way.

Social Security is fundamentally an intergenerational transfer program. It is not a personal savings account in which each of us has accumulated a pot of money earmarked exclusively for our own retirement. “Our” Social Security payroll taxes were immediately distributed as benefits to then-current retirees. Payroll taxes collected today are used primarily to pay benefits to today's beneficiaries. To make that clear: today, the Social Security benefits we retirees receive come mainly from our kids' Social Security taxes. In turn, the benefits today's workers eventually receive will depend largely on the contributions of future workers.

That distinction matters.

When AARP tells people that Social Security is “OUR money,” it reinforces the impression that each generation has already paid for its own benefits and is simply reclaiming what belongs to it. That isn't how the program is financed. And they know that.

I understand the argument for protecting Social Security. I understand why AARP advocates strongly for its beneficiaries. But I believe AARP can make that case without misrepresenting the underlying economics.

If additional resources are required to maintain or increase benefits, someone ultimately has to bear that cost. It can be current beneficiaries, current workers, future workers, taxpayers generally, or some combination of them. There is no way to avoid the intergenerational nature of that choice.

But are additional resources really necessary? Do we have to become a burden to our kids? My generation has benefited enormously from the sacrifices and accomplishments of previous generations. Our parents and grandparents endured extraordinary hardships—won two world wars, survived the Great Depression and beat the Soviet Union in the Cold War—and they built a remarkably prosperous country. I believe we should be willing to accept some sacrifice ourselves rather than simply insisting that our children, grandchildren and future generations bear an ever-increasing burden on our behalf.

This is especially true since an intergenerational transfer scheme like Social Security is only sustainable if each generation is larger than the previous one. Ours failed to raise children in sufficient numbers to support us in our old age. Now those chickens have come home to roost. The price of our failure must be paid either by them or by us. I, for one, don’t want to become a burden to them.

I therefore ask everyone to reconsider the message conveyed by “It’s OUR money — always has been, always will be.”

Adopt an honest appraisal of Social Security: It is a social insurance program financed largely on a pay-as-you-go basis, not a collection of individual accounts containing each person's accumulated contributions.

Please don't be deceived yourself—or worse, other Americans by claiming the money being paid out today is “our money” that we previously set aside for ourselves. Except for the remaining balance in the Social Security Trust Fund, much of the money being used to pay today's benefits comes from today's workers (our children and grandchildren), and tomorrow's beneficiaries will depend on tomorrow's workers.