Lessons in Social Security

In my American Welfare State course, we're discussing policy changes that can make social security more financially feasible. Our professor asked us to split into groups based on our opinions.

Out of a class of 27, this is how my class divided:

3: other
5: change benefit formula to cut spending
7: raise retirement age
12: increase revenues from payroll taxes

Although this is a crude sample of the the college-aged population, I was surprised to see that close to half of the class chose to raise their own taxes.  I might be more self-interested than the average empathetic student...but it got me wondering why do we advocate raising our own taxes?