Link: http://kromeisburning.blogspot.com/2005/03/your-social-security-response-kit.html

I have been living in the USA for nearly 7 years. Every year I get a Social Security Statement from the government. This year's statement shows that in 2 more years, at my current salary, I will become eligible for Social Security benefits when I retire.
This means that I will soon have a dog in the Social Security fight, so I found the above link that attempts to cut through some of the simplistic nonsense currently being bandied about on the subject of Social Security reform here in the USA.
It is also worth noting that in the late 1980's, the government in the UK attempted to scale back Social Security benefits (by abandoning the earnings-related component of the pension system) and persuade people to "contract out" of the state pension system, in order to address what was seen as the inevitable rise in pension costs to an untenable level after 2020. At the time, rosy predictions were made about the much better returns on private pension funds.
I have a private pension fund in the UK, and I can tell you that every one of those initial predictions has been steadily replaced by much less optimistic predictions. At one time, predictions were that my retirement fund would be worth nearly half a million pounds, now the predictions are for it to be worth around half of that amount.
I would caution anybody looking into the Social Security issue here in the USA to be very wary of any predictions of future returns made by private corporations. Ask yourself; whose interests are they looking out for?