Once a system like that is in place, it's very hard to stop the pipeline.
I honestly don't see the purpose of that type of system either.
Why create this pipeline of money anyway? Why not just take the contributions that everyone makes and put them into individual retirement accounts?
Assuming the system is stable (which it's probably not), it seems there would be virtually no difference between me paying for the current retirees (and expecting my children to pay for my retirement) vs. me paying into my own retirement.
I'm not too familiar with these concepts, so maybe someone will school me.
Because after WWII, there were no retirement accounts in Germany (simplified and not completely correct, but you get the point). Should they have let old people starve?
It seems you're now stuck with a program that was designed to address a problem of 70 years ago.
I'm especially curious about the history of Social Security in the USA. I can read about this on my own time, though.
It does seem like it was a tool used for polotical gain.
The reason that it's not done that way is three-fold:
(a) People's contributions are not enough to cover their social security. Instead, they depend on the current workers paying in more than the previous generation did (in a perpetual cycle).
(b) Liberals oppose the idea of personal responsibility. If you don't save any money for retirement, they think society still has an obligation to fund your retirement.
(c) It's a benefit which goes to old people and old people vote a lot.
In reality, it's just a cleverly marketed way of stealing money from the youth and giving it to old voters.
In fact, most liberals I know are very much about personal responsibility - including towards society and the environment.
Wealth transfer is not necessarily a bad thing.
Also, the pay-as-you-go systems allows the politician to hand out money straight away. Making the programs instantly popular and entrenched.
Theoretically the system could be justifiably stopped at any second and simply drained by the current pensioners (which would probably happen almost instantly). But good luck explaining that to people raised under the false assumption that the public pensions are "safe" (as politicians like to announce so frequently).
Our best bet would probably be "universal basic income for everyone below retirement age" but pensions are "topped up" to parity with basic income. A not-insignificant portion of pensioners already gets pensions below social security levels (meaning it is topped up to social security levels -- not that they get welfare on top). You could then fade out the pension system and replace it with basic income.