Here is how it COULD BE DONE:
Ditch Social Security. Doing so would leave payroll tax payers over 15% of income formerly paid to the Black Hole of Social Security (half paid by employee and employer). Saving an additional 10% would be a breeze. The government would no longer have a pot of money to squander around the trough, We The People would be able to fund ourselves as we see fit. Are we really so incapable? Do you REALLY trust the government to be more responsible with OUR savings?
Were the Republicans so wrong to attempt to privatize Social Security? Just because the market took a dump? I don't think so. In fact, I think both sides were merely moving incrementally where towards their agenda. The Dems won (always easy to gain support for seizing other peoples assets) and Federal government spending as a percentage of GDP went from 3% less than 1 lifetime ago to 26% today.
The really crazy thing is that the "American Dream" which is not only owning a home, but educating 2 or 3 kids at top private schools and then having $1.5 million in financial assets (not including the home and hardware) left over at retirement is attainable only by the 1 in 10, or perhaps only 1 in 2o, (5% to 10%) families. Worse, even if you get there, there is no guarantee that you enjoyed the ride or didn't lose your health in the effort. Lastly, given our whopping divorce rate (what is it? over 50% of first marriages?) and its financial burdens this was NEVER, NEVER, NEVER going to happen.
That means that it was all a mirage... and that people have needlessly worried about something they had absolutely NO CONTROL OVER. The fact that a very small group of people from a very narrow window in time lived in a country that had room to grow, had no competition from the ROW (destroyed during WWII), and had an increasing population to pick up the tab for an absurd, ridiculous, fallacious, flaky, nutty, cretinous, and just plain nonsensical set of social program/ponzi scheme does NOT mean that those set of circumstances were sustainable.
Yet we bawl, wail, and moan over the loss of something that never really existed, or if it did exist it did so in such a narrow space of place and time as to make the memory and claim of it nothing more than fantasy.