I remember a time not that long ago. I was a young man in the Coast Guard. Having the time of my life. It was the early seventies. We had already landed on the Moon, and by the end of the century we would have a permanent base and be headed for Mars. The Vietnam debacle was winding down. Nixon had gone to China. The majority of Democrats still loved their country but their leftward movements were becoming more apparent. I wasn’t sure what the future would hold for me but I was optimistic. I was going to fly like an eagle.
The twenties teens seemed so far away. But time keeps on slipping into the future.
Now they’re here. And I’m getting close to applying for Social Security.
Social Security was the brainchild of the Roosevelt administration. The same one that made the depression of the thirties “great”. It was supposed to be only a “supplement” to your retirement. The Government would take money from your paycheck all your working life and when you “retired” at age 65 you would be able to get a portion of it back to “supplement” the retirement income you wisely prepared through stocks, bonds, and annuities. Of course some people don’t save for retirement, some situations in life can be beyond ones control and it can be tough if you are unable to hold a paying job. Others can and do save for retirement through company 401K’s
Of course when you mix “government” and “economy” in the same sentence bad things can and do happen. Like 2008 when many retirement portfolios were wiped out.
Then Social Security becomes VERY important.
Of course we’ve known for a long time that Social Security was and is a Ponzi scheme. Way back then the life expectancy of an American male in 1935 was 60, It was a good bet that he would never live to see his first S.S. check. Now you have people living into their nineties who have been collecting for nearly three decades. But this is not a bad thing. The bad thing is how the government squanders the money it has, such as handing out money to people who have never put in to the system. People with no S.S. number, ILLEGAL ALIENS!
From the Washington Free Beacon
One billion dollars!
…Government benefits are also going to illegal aliens through the representative payee system. 17 percent of representative payees in the sample did not have an SSN recorded because they were undocumented noncitizens, the inspector general said.
Illegal aliens without SSNs are allowed to receive benefits from the government when acting as representatives for their minor children…
Read it all.
In the morning of your life you didn’t think about such things. It’s late afternoon, I think about it a lot. What once seemed far away…