Posted by
AudiR10TDI on Saturday, March 03, 2007 8:42:44 AM
March 3, 2007 -- Friends, neighbours and Baby Boomers. I can fix Social Security with a wave of my hand -- this very hand! You won't like it and it will never be done, but here's the answer, free gratis for nothing.
The real problem with it is not anythingmentioned by the Anderson Cooper Instant Solutions Brigade, including the AARP. The truth, as usual, is that nobody ever does any research.
If Social Security had been left the way it was when it was instituted, it would still be solvent.
(1) The retirement age was set at 65 when most working men didn't live to be older than 50. Therefore, it was predicated on the old Insurance Company gamble that more money will be paid in than will ever be taken out. Now that the largest generation in American History is retiring en masse and can look forward to 35 more years of life, everybody's surprised that the money pot is empty. Hello?
(2) When Social Security was designed, it was considered an income SUPPLEMENT, not a pension. That is, it was money to be added onto what the working man was able to set aside for himself. Today people rely on Social Security for their entire retirement support. They are demanding that it do what it was never designed nor intended to do.
(3) The original Social Security did not include Disability, Widows and Orphans, or Same Sex "spouses", children of war casualties or other hangers-on. It was money removed from the salary of the working man to be returned to the working man. Period. If you have a wagon that will hold 12 people and you pile 40 people into it, why are you surprised when that wagon won't roll?
(4) Finally, the Social Security system was designed for a stable population of low-wage farmers, small business people and factory workers. It did not figure on the Bulge In The Snake, the 79 million kiddies born at the end of World War II, whose parents were hypnotized by Dr. Spock to believe that The World Belongs To The Child and that their duty was to send these kids through college and make them lawyers, doctors, business owners and stockbrokers even if they had to mortgage their souls to provide this future. And they did it without ever teaching their children (most of them) that this is not the way the rest of the world actually lives, works, is educated and behaves. Now they have a generation of "Adult Children" who believe that they are entitled at birth to the lifestyle that their parents worked for 30 years to attain -- and they are entitled to it forever.
In conclusion: the Social Security system was founded to do something other than what it is currently trying to do, because it never faced the fact that the world it was designed for has utterly vanished away. The only solution, assuming you think it ought to be kept, is to restore it to its original form and stand firm against the screaming, kicking, flailing GrabbyBabies of whatever age and kind.
But I'm not holding my breath.