It's a textbook example of the classic political problem (and I don't just mean in democracies, every system is vulnerable to this) where subsidies and handouts

It's a textbook example of the classic political problem (and I don't just mean in democracies, every system is vulnerable to this) where subsidies and handouts are extremely sticky and almost impossible to get rid of, even when the underlying condition has changed and the original motivation for the subsidies no longer applies. Social Security made sense in a world where you had a 10:1 worker-to-dependent ratio and people rarely lived for very long after retirement. But right now it's exactly the opposite: the dependency ratio is cratering, people can live on SS for decades, and the Boomers are hugely rich while their grandchildren can't afford a house. We desperately need to completely invert Social Security and instead have massive wealth transfers from the old to the young. But that's politically quite impossible, so this perverse situation remains.