My wife and I aren't counting on receiving Social Security checks when we hit retirement age. I think most realistic people my age have looked at the evidence and drawn the exact same conclusion. This is a program that is unsustainable.

As former U.S. comptroller general David Walker points out, it was never really meant to be an investment system anyways, but rather a mechanism to transfer wealth from higher income earners to lower income earners. It's structured so that lower-income earners will receive a higher benefit.

Did you know that the cost of living has apparently gone down in the last  year or so? That's news to me. Our budget for food has increased around 10% over the last couple of years. Everything is costing more. Just go to the convenience store and pickup a soft drink. Used to run you around $1.25 - $1.50. Now it's close to $2. But according to the government, it's actually lower. And so this year, they decided not to adjust the Social Security payout to adjust for cost of living.

Ron Paul is no fan of the Social Security system in general, but he does correctly point out that amidst all this talk of health care reform and how different models would affect seniors, we are completely ignoring how the government has manipulated the cost of living figures to decrease the amount it has to payout in Social Security. Using the older model of calculating the Consumer Price Index, these checks should actually be twice what they are now.

Instead, there is no real money in a fund for Social Security, only IOUs as it's all been spent on wasteful projects over the years.