Social security is paid for by everyone that receives a paycheck, every month.(or two weeks, or twice a month or weekly--whatever) It is not part of your federal taxes or state taxes. It's not even part of your medicare payment as that is now an additional and separate amount. I also pay for an employer determined health insurance amount, a dental insurance amount, and the amount to put into my 401k.
(No one has ever called my 401k an entitlement. But I am putting less in that than I am into Social Security)
Since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and yes, I was short even as a child, there have been news announcements about the Social Security running out before I will ever get there. It was supposed to run out before my parents got there, but they got lucky, and received their monthly.check and it supplemented them until their deaths. Both took their social security at 63. My father received his for 19 years and my mother for 12 years. Social Security started August 14, 1935, so they both paid in their entire working lives. Both called it their Welfare check. The humiliation of a government check has long been present.
So why did FDR start the Social Security Administration? Other than he was some kind of communist and bleeding heart liberal etc, etc? Before Social Security, the PROPORTION OF ELDERLY WHO were poor was nearly one in two, and it is now less than one in eight. More than 60 percent of those lifted from poverty were women.
Before social security, each community had their own way of dealing with the destitute. From providing for them in individual family's homes, indentured servitutude was used. The family provided food and shelter in exchange for chores. Frequently this involved children and widows. The poorhouse or almshouse was another method, and a good many horror stories started with this type of house. These houses were transitioned to nursing homes and hospitals after social security. The fear of both nursing home and hospital among those that experienced the great depression was very closely related to the horror and shame of the poorhouse.
But why the constant threat of it running out? It is tied to the constant threat of more people than ever that are elderly. The median age in the U.S.A is 37.6 years. That means half the population is under 37.6 and half is over 37.6. Projections always imply that this median will go upward as the population ages, but reality is that the population is always being increased. In 1960 the median age was 29, in 1970 it was 28, by 2010 it was 37.2. We talk about the baby boomers as the root of all population evil, but the median age in 1950 was about 30 and in 1940 it was about 29. But in 1920 it was about 23 (men about 25 and women about 21). We had just finished a world war, we had no antibiotics, we had just gone through a nightmarish influenza season, women died in childbirth, there was no insulin, we didn't get the whole germ theory thing then, so people died and not of old age.
So it sounds like more people than ever are living long enough to work and pay into social security. (what? you have never heard anyone say it like that?)
So what is the pay-off for constantly threatening that social security is going to run out? Is the pay-off fear? Is it a way to try and stop a social program so you can then tax that money--moving it from social security to the general coffers where the politicians can spend it on their favorite pet donator? Is it to keep people too rattled to ever feel secure enough to think about what else is going on around them?
Am I paranoid? Sure I am. I don't trust the current people in power as far as I can throw them. History should explain why, look at all the long-term corruption that has come to light at various times in our countries history. We have stories about it daily in our own time. How much never sees the light of day? Do I think that the global warming deniers getting massive contributions from the oil industry have only my best interest at heart? Do I think that the richest congress this country has had for eons is highly empathetic to the plight of the poor. (Mary Antoinette's famous though probably inaccurate quote comes to mind--"let them eat cake")
Our power structure encourages people to work until they fall over dead, acts as if retirement is a sign of a lazy user. All the while they are vacationing for weeks and months each year as part of their due, most of us have been putting off getting to travel, relax with our favorite past times, fish, paint, or do anything we would choose to do---until we can retire. Since no one ever said "when I grow up, I want to set in a cubicle 40-60 hours a week while a crappy daycare raises my kids and the public schools expose them to poorly paid teachers and undiscipline peers whose parents don't want them disciplined at threat of violence to the poorly paid teachers. I want to put off seeing the national parks and put off seeing great art and put off relaxing on the beach because I just love this boring, underpaid, repetitive, unappreciated but necessary job I have and that is why I'm on the planet." No one has ever said that.
Is Social Security going to run out? Only if we keep messing with it until it does. Its basically an annuity system. A person that lives long enough could get more than they put in, but every person that dies without collecting has already donated to the annuity. Most annuities pay the insurance company to keep selling them. And there are a lot of people profiting off of social security besides the people putting in to the coffer.
Yet the panic continues. Why do we panic---I personally am going to be really hacked off if I die without getting to retire. I don't think I'm alone in that. I think the panick is from that sick feeling that "I wasted my whole life trying to get to do just what I want, and now its too late." I have a lot of empathy for those poor individuals that died in slavery never knowing freedom, that died in prison for false or ridiculously silly charges hoping every day for a reprieve, that died at work......
I'm taking retirement the minute I can.
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