SOLVING SOCIAL SECURITY'S PROBLEMS

Let's be honest about this.  The Social Security like our Constitution started out with good intentions and a fairly good plan.  However like the Constitution, it has been miss-handled, miss-applied and ruined since then by, the politicians.  Here again let me remind you that I feel each step was taken on behalf of what was considered a good cause.  But once again those in charge are looking at only today and ignoring the long range and cumulative effect that today's decision will have on the future.

When I was in the 10th grade, my Social Studies teacher (who was a died in the wool Roosevelt man), had us all fill out our applications for our Social Security Cards.  When I questioned why, his response was it is a class assignment and you will need it when you go to work.  We had studied about how this system would make sure that everyone had some income when they could no longer work.  That sounded good and reasonable.   However for some reason I questioned if there would be enough.  He assured me that the experts (sic) had figured it out and there would be.   I then used the argument that it was bound to fail.  He asked why I felt it would fail and I replied, "they are using percentages to determine the amount each worker pays".  He replied yes, but so what?  I said well as far as I know, everything the government has done in the past has increased, when the percentages increase to 100% it has to fail.   Actually it would fail long before that, but remember, I was just a kid challenging my teacher on his concepts.   The employee paid 1% in 1937 and his employer paid 1%  Today the employee pays 6.2% and the employer pays 7.65%.   That is a total of 13.85%.  

It is quite likely the system would have worked if statesmen had been in control of our government.  On second thought  if statesman had been in control they would not have come up with the system.  A short while later in life I became aware, that, the so called money in the bank for the citizens retirement was not there.  Our politicians had loaned it to themselves to operate our government.  But I was assured that I need not worry as when I retired those who are still working would pay in enough to cover my retirement.    But wait, if the government is spending the dollars I am sending them, then isn't that a tax?   While I can not state the actual source, memory tells me, when FDR's personal papers were made public; it was discovered,  he had asked his cabinet to come up with a method of increasing taxes that the citizens would buy into and not object to.  

This shill game was easy to hide in the beginning as, there were very few retirees and many more workers who were paying in.  However as medicine and our life styles; continued to increase our  span of life, and as the amount of labor required to make products decreased, we arrived on the slippery slope of doom.  When the politicians allowed changes that let people who pay for only a few quarters, receive full benefit, when they added in Medicare etc., it has hastened Social Securities doom.  Now they are even talking of letting people who are not citizens collect from it.  And, even more recently we see the effects of out sourcing the work so now the laborers in other countries are not putting anything in. 

Though I do not have it at my finger tips a recent article in the July 12, 2004 issue of Scientific America,  titled "10 Partisan Myths" pointed out the fact.   In their annual “actuarial deficit” for 2003, the SS department predicted a shortfall of $3.5 trillion.  The author went on to add in what he felt was necessary and the total came to $45 trillion which is $3 trillion more than the total net worth of our nation.

THE FIX:

1. Admit that it is an outright tax and apply it too all incomes with no cut off point.

2. Admit it is a handout once the recipient has collected all that he has put into the system.  Let's face it, someone else must make up the difference.  The Government can only spend what it takes from its citizens. 

3. Encourage those with other incomes over $100,000 a year to surrender their rights to receive monthly checks.  They will only pass it on to their issues who really did nothing to earn it.  And urge them to use peer pressure on those who don't voluntarily surrender.

4. Encourage or use peer pressure to have all those with other incomes of over $50,000 to surrender half of their benefits.

While this may not be a cure all, it certainly would get us headed in the right direction.

CLOSING THOUGHT:

Income is a need to survive; whereas wealth is only a want.  Therefore, to be just, we should tax only the wealth and not the income. 

  I BELIEVE:

That everything over a basic living income would be taxing the wealth and help to equalize the distribution of the wealth created by man's labor.

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