Half Would Ditch Social Security

From Financial-planning.com

A staggering 48% of American workers would prefer to stop paying into Social Security even if it meant they wouldn’t receive those benefits when they retired, according to a new survey by Sun Life Financial.

The survey, part of what Sun Life calls its Unretirement Index, is a random-dial poll of 1,200 Americans age between 30 and 65 that is blind to economic status and education level. Its aim is to gauge the effect of economic, financial and societal forces on working Americans.
Surprisingly, Americans of all economic levels eschewed Social Security. At the top end, 52% of people earning more than $125,000 a year wanted to stop paying Social Security, which might make sense as this group is more likely to be financially self-sufficient. But 47% of people earning $25,000 or less felt the same way. In fact, those numbers were consistent across all income levels.

What did make a slight difference was age: 59% of working Americans in their thirties wanted to stop paying into the system and only 33% of those age 60 and older, the people most likely to start receiving benefits, would give up those benefits if they could opt out of paying for them. Older people at least see the value of Social Security, says David Jacobson, a spokesperson for Sun Life.