Yes, they would be much worse if there wasn't social security. I feel Social Security as it's currently organized makes people feel rather worthless. People do need purpose in life, right? They're to expensive to hire and letting them do volunteer jobs could very well kill low paid jobs... What can be done? Something productive that does not displace real jobs?
This is an extremely hard problem. Being charitable without decreasing the self esteem of the receiver is very difficult, I have no clue how to go about this. People will wise up very quickly to make-pretend-work, are proud and will likely develop all kinds of problems if you force this on them. Personally I'd rather try to live of the land than to accept social security, but on the other hand in winter or if you have a couple of mouths to feed and no job your choices are extremely limited.
It's one of the reasons why I'm all for dropping all borders. That would force us to deal with these issues right now, rather than to push them further over the horizon hoping for some miracle. We're setting ourselves up for one of the worst wars the world has ever seen. (The haves vs the have nots).
