No, it's not a safety net, in the retirement sense. SS disability is a safety net. Welfare is a safety net. SS retirement is a mandatory collective retirement system that we ALL paid into, speficically 6.2% of my income up to $184,500 of earnings.

So, what you are saying is that I should pay $11,439 so others can benefit, but not me? (Not to mention the $11439 the company will also contribute - Self employed get the privilege of contributing BOTH halves of that.)

If only Bush's proposal to partially privatize SS had been implemented, we wouldn't even be having this discussion, as SS would be fully solvent. But, here we are.

I will have paid multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars into SS over 50 years of working. Sorry, I fully expect to get something meaningful back on that, not just 'donate it to the cause'.