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The Mission of Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty is to apply the perennial truths of economics and ethics to the urgent challenges of today. We are building a sustained argument against the progressive ideological regime that increasingly dominates America’s institutions and rebuilding the foundation of the nation’s first principles: freedom, equality, charity, and the pursuit of happiness for all. Read more.

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What Replaces Social Security?

_{Nathan Lewis
July 15, 2026
6
Taxes}

The Social Security system might have been a good idea in 1936, when seniors faced the collapse of asset values in the Great Depression — including the devaluation of their bank savings in 1933 — while their adult children were also out of work and struggling to feed their own children. It might have been a good idea in 1950, when the ratio of payers to recipients was 16.5:1, and the tax rate had climbed to 3.0% combined. But it is definitely not a good idea in 2026, or for the foreseeable next fifty years.