But better than being rich is being independent. That’s what is at stake here.

If individual Americans were able to own their own Social Security accounts, its basic features could be provided not by expropriated funds (taxes), but by invested funds. And, after you’ve paid for your safety net pension, and then your main pension or retirement nest-egg, you expect, as you get richer, to pay less of a percentage of your income toward pensions.

I mean, rich people don’t really need pensions. If they hit a cash flow crunch, they simply sell off some of their accumulated assets. The reason we common folk need pensions is that we haven’t accumulated enough assets. Indeed, our pension funds are there to act as our accumulated assets, invested specifically for the one purpose: retirement.

What Warren Buffett proposes, apparently, is to remove the cut-off point, and extend the FICA tax. In Buffett’s case, to his entire $66 million a year in income. Though, Buffett clearly expects no commensurate increase in his Social Security benefits upon retirement (and might be shocked were anyone to suggest it).

Buffett’s idea would, on paper, “save the Social Security System.” But it would be a monumental tax increase, the side-effects of which would likely be disastrous.

What such a move would do is transform the system from a mimicry of private pensions to a straight welfare program, taking from richer people and giving to the poorer. Any pretense that the Social Security System was one of paying our own way would go out the window.

And, under the rug, nestled like the wisest of serpents, would be the one thing not necessary to ever mention again: the fact that, for two thirds of a century, our so-called representatives of both parties squandered our retirement nest egg, our “safety net,” with no thought for the future.

They would be saved by the rich.