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Millions of seniors live on Social Security. These are the folks who worked hard in the era of the 1940's into the 1990's and many of them didn't work for employers who had pension funds. Some worked for employers who downsized or merged. Others had small family businesses and paid into the system. These folks never made enough over the cost of living, the cost of raising children and the costs of growing older to accumulate much in the way of savings. I know many folks in their thirties and forties now who get a little bit ahead only to have the savings wiped out by an illness or other reversal of fortune.
The sum of it is, when they get old enough to retire, they won't have any retirement other than Social Security. And that may not be there.
What was touted as an "insurance" program (not an entitlement) in the 1940's through the 1960's has been revealed for what it is: a government Ponzi scheme. The government never had a lockbox on the funds, helped itself to the money at will, and left IOU's for another generation to pay.
If you or I did that, we'd be in jail. Probably a federal prison.
But the federal government can get away with a 65-year old rip-off like this, during much of those years with the workers totally blinded to the fact they weren't buying retirement insurance. I distinctly recall Social Security being called "insurance" over and over again ... we were paying into a mandatory insurance program against the vicissitudes of life, medical and other emergencies that can rob savings, and against poverty in old age.
No we weren't. We didn't buy a policy, we bought a Ponzi scheme and the federal government just grabbed more tax dollars with a promise and a wink and both fingers cross behind its back.
Social Security is the most blatant example of the government's double standard for itself and individuals. If it pulls off a giant fraud, it's a government issue. If we do it, it's a crime.
This isn't to advocate individuals being allowed to gin up Ponzi schemes or perpetrate frauds. What is on the table here is the government not being called to account by the citizens for its perpetration of fraud. The reason is, so far it's been making the payments on Social Security retirement benefits. So far.
Maybe that's why there's such a movement on for euthanasia in this nation. If you can't pay the elderly, then kill them. That's one way to solve the problem of an insolvent Social Security un-trust account. Oddly enough, it's the Social Security issue that's always brought up at election time to frighten the older folks into voting for the Democrats, those friends of the people who brought this scheme into being.
Was there a better way? Of course. Mandatory deductions are good for lower income workers whose paychecks never go far enough and whose savings, if any, evaporate with major emergencies concerning health, children, or the demise of the family car that takes the breadwinner to work.
Parents cannot count on their kids to take care of them either. Yes, I took care of my mother but I'm over 60 and my generation was more apt to do those things. This generation is looking out for Number Uno and if the parents get shunted aside, oh well. It's part of our new "family values" system, which changes yearly.
We also have a working class of single moms and dads with kids to bring up, and not all these folk can provide for daily needs plus set aside investments and retirement funds. That's the higher income groups who do that, not the receptionists and clerks at the local businesses.
We've become a lot more stratified now than we were in the middle of the 20th century when most working folks had only month-to-month incomes. But the necessities of life were cheap also. Luxuries belonged to the professional class or the entrepreneurs, along with investments and retirement plans. The rest just plodded along. We have a larger class of higher-income folks now, largely due to the technological revolution and the pay scales for the technically skilled. But as more and more enter the field, what will become of the pay scales?
This nation has an enormous amount of "working poor" which I define as those whose income is subject to Parkinson's law: "Expenditures always rise to meet income so there is never any surplus." Millions of working Americans fall into that category.
Mandatory savings is a good idea. But, not giving a permanent retirement account and a choice of where to invest the money deducted is not good policy. There is another law, not Parkinson's, that is in effect: "If the government can spend it, it will."
For all this, we still have people in Washington, D.C., who object to privatization of Social Security. These must be the same people who believe in euthanasia for the elderly.
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