I began my working life at 14 washing dishes in a truck stop just outside of Sedalia, Missouri. Yes, back in 1976 labor laws permitted this. Fortunately it was only for the summer and then I went off to boarding school. However. The Social Security Administration saw fit to begin taxing me for SS and Medicare just like everybody else. I recently made the mistake of looking into the Black Box of SSA to find out just how much I've paid into it since I started working. And without oversharing, let's just say it's six figures. Now at age 70 (if I don't die first), the SSA will pull out their largest eyedropper and deign to give me back a monthly stipend of my own money, totalling $2,200. At that amount, I may recoup all of my money on my 143rd birthday. I may will myself to live long enough to do just that.
According to a report the other day, DOGE now has evidence that a large number of illegal aliens have been issued Social Security cards. This means that someday, presuming they don't all get cleaned out by then, my very generous fiduciary legacy will go towards satisfying the corporeal appetites of some guy from Honduras who is not even a United States citizen with no legal right to be in this country at all. His draw will likely come in the form of Medicare benefits as there probably aren't many fence jumpers over 60, but if there is anything left of SS by the time they are, I have the comforting knowledge that I'll be supporting him instead of my daughters. Hugs.
And along with those getting SS cards came the expected finding that some of these guys registered to vote. And actually did. Naturally.
Social Security possibly had good intentions when it was created in 1935, but it was always going to be a case where the dog chases the car because of the way it's set up. You don't get your own lock box that nobody else can touch, so it goes into a pool. You're 25 and you pay into it, and somebody who's 65 already begins drawing from the pot. Expectedly, when the population gets older, it begins to take out more than the younger people are putting in. Baby Boom. Today everybody is older and the national birth rate is down. Fewer people are and will be supporting more and more of us Boomers to the point that the whole thing is expected to collapse by 2035. Young people complain that Boomers are going to suck the whole thing dry and why should they pay to support us? That's a fair question because if I were 25 again, other than learning to surf this time, I'd likely be thinking the same thing. FDR, being an old guy himself when he got this ball rolling, should have known this was coming down the line. But as politicians, they are rarely subjected to the consequences of the laws they create. If you've ever read Victor Davis Hanson, you know what I'm talking about. If not, you've probably already made that determination for yourself.
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Well, to the young people out there, I don't want you to support me. I just want my six figures back. After that, I guess nature takes its course. But looking into that Black Box and seeing how much cash was taken from me to dump into a bureaucratic abyss makes me sick to my stomach. And the fact that the people who took it from me are only going to give it back in drips and drabs practically gives me leprosy. The money doesn't get disbursed to my kids when I expire; the government gets to keep it to do whatever the government does with your money. LIke spend it on illegal aliens, or queer drag shows in Latvia, or gee I don't know, any of the other obsecenities that DOGE uncovers every day. If I knew at 14 what I know now, I can't imagine what I'd feel like as I scraped slop off of other people's dinner plates thinking, "Well, right now and for the next three hours of my shift, I'm doing this to pay for that." Personally, I don't believe that SSA funds have never been siphoned off to pay for other stuff. With 22 percent of the federal budget, I think that pot of gold is just too tempting.
Ok, so SS is a lose-lose plan that you're forced to participate in for your entire working life. And for decades people have been saying that by the time you retire, there won't be anything left. They've also been saying it's the Third Rail of Politics, so nobody who could change it is willing to touch it. When the music stops and it goes under, no one politician has to take blame so I expect that's just their plan. I think they'll print more money for a while to keep it up and running, or they'll take the money away from something else, but sooner or later, SS may have to swallow hard and hop off the cliff. Goodbye cruel world, I knew ye well.
The president is attempting to do something about it, but it's such a big problem with an 80-year head of steam that it's going to be extremely challenging. However, he is trying to make some changes. Give him credit for that. Cutting staff from 57,000 to 50,000 is supposed to save $800 million by next year. Since SSA has a deficit of $110 billion, that won't do much, but I guess you have to start somewhere. Next, he wants to eliminate the taxes you pay on your SS benefits, because he knows that even though all of us like being double-taxed on the same income, he wants to kill that inherently unfair practice. Give it time, you might learn to appreciate it. Analysts believe that removing the taxes will create a further deficit of 17 percent in revenue for SSA, which will result in reduced benefits to us and speed up insolvency by two years. I don't know if that's going to happen or not because with SS being the Third Rail, trimming payouts might end some political careers. But there is another thing to consider about Donald Trump's plans: if the midterms favor the Democrats and they get control of the House, you can bet they will do everything that can be done to see that the SSA struggles and fails through neglect. What a gift it would be to blame that on Trump and the Republicans, coupled with their Bold New Ideas on how to fix things for the Working People. Vote for us! We'll take your SS payments and invest them in windmills, solar panels and methane-capturing BBBs (Bovine-Butt-Balloons). The returns will be astounding, and SSA will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix.
So Congress, at least in the short term, will have to find a way to keep it going. And there is no collective group on the planet that knows more about finding ways to spend your money than Congress. I am supremely confident in their abilities to keep the old Studebaker running (a sarcastic commenter might say).
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