Social Security Failed Due to Underpopulation?

Additional Note added September 26, 2015 : I do not neccessarily agree with the phrase I put at the summary stating, "It appears as though people should get pay that may have been promised them, in turn for initially paying into the system" maybe I was summarizing what many people claim to believe or meant something else that I do not currently remember as I am writing this additional note.

Copyright

2010

Carl Janssen

Originally created September 6, 2010

Revised September 22, 2010

First I would like to point out that I am in no way shape or form endorsing social security taxes, I am simply stating how it could work and how it can fail to work when people do not have enough children.

The idea behind social security is that people in the first generation payed for people in their older generation, in turn people in the next generation would pay for the people in the first generation.

Now as I understand it the promise when the first generation payed into social security taxes is that when they get old the next generation would pay for them, thus it can make sense that some people feel entitled to getting paid, when they are ready to retire, having had payed the taxes for the very purpose of retirement (as well as the purpose to help their elders out) when they were younger.

The ethical dilemma with social security taxes is the same as with every tax.  People are forced to pay taxes or be physically attacked or imprisoned by the government.  Mandatory Non-Voluntary Taxes resembles a syndicate asking for protection money or a man mugging someone with a gun saying that the person willingly gave them money and that the presence of the gun was irrelevant.  None the less, I suggest paying taxes for purposes of safety.  I pay taxes myself for purposes of safety.  That being said I have absolutely nothing against voluntary donations to help people out.

In the following paragraphs I use the phrase goods, not money.  I use the phrase goods because they are tangible things, not a fake inflatable exchange.  I also do not endorse women being required to work for money, but simply did my calculations that way in order to make the math easier.  (If a man produces two units and a woman zero units the average number of units per person produced between the two is one unit each.)

Now imagine if each man married one woman and had two contributing children.  These two children gave their parents a total of two units of goods (the average [mean] between the two of them was one unit of goods from each of them.)  These children when they grew up marry and have exactly two contributing children each who do the same for their parents.  If this is the case with each generation what was put into their parents generation was given back to them precisely, breaking even with no more and no less.

Now imagine if each man married one woman and had four contributing children.  These four children gave their parents a total of four units of goods (the average [mean] between the four of them was one unit of goods from each of them.)  These children when they grew up married and had exactly four contributing children each who did the same for their parents, in this case the parents would have got 2 times what they initially put in (as a couple) (4 received [from 4 children]-2 donated or taxed from [both the man and woman.))

So if we assume monogamous marriages and that all people marry.  If every married couple has more than two contributing children on average in every generation they will receive back more than they initially invested when they are old enough to collect payment of goods.

If people had more children and social security was done with goods instead of inflatable currency could it have worked abundantly?

In summary

1.     It appears as though people should get pay that may have been promised them, in turn for initially paying into the system

2.     It may not be ethical to require people to pay into the system, yet forcing new people to pay into the system has been the means to repay those who payed initially.

3.    If married couples had more than two contributing children they could have got more than they put in, if goods were used rather than inflatable money.