By Jane Butterfield
Why cant we question the Social Security system? Is it really disloyal to ask the hard questions? According to many Democrats, the only patriotic option Americans have is to continue to trust the entire Social Security system to our representatives in Washington. And yet, within fifteen years, the system will collapse. Something must change: fast.
Social Security is a bad investment. You dont have to have an MBA in Business to understand this pay-as-you-go system isnt working. As soon as you pay your Social Security taxes, your money is gone. Kiss it goodbye, because you have lost all legal right to control it. When you pass away, you cannot leave your social security dollars to your survivors. You cant cash them in and you cant borrow against them. You cant even enjoy watching your interest accumulate, because your social security investment doesnt earn any interest. Instead your paycheck is paid out to current retirees who will receive more in real dollars than they ever paid in.
Many thinking people recognize this is a federally subsidized Ponzi scheme, but still it lives on. We have lost control. Meanwhile, the ratio of workers to retirees steadily shrinks, and the piper has nothing but a stack of I.O.Us.
A major failure in the Social Security is that there simply arent enough workers to keep it going. When Franklin Delano Roosevelts social engineers designed this system, there were 30 workers for every retiree. Today its more like four to one.
In addition, at the inception of Social Security, the average life expectancy of American workers was closer to 60 years of age. With many of todays retirees living well into their 80s, the system cannot pay for itself. Furthermore, the brutally honest will remember to subtract from the system the 40 million babies who have been aborted since 1968. These children were potential workers who will not be able to pay into the system. As family size keeps shrinking, it becomes obvious that were heading for disaster.
Most of the workers in the X generation have already come to this conclusion. Which raises an important question: where is the outrage? Why dont these workers demand accountability? Does anyone care?
Perhaps the insanity of the whole system can be best summed up in the life of worker Ida Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont. Ms. Fuller retired in 1940, after paying a total of $44 in payroll taxes. When Ida did in 1975, she had received $20, 933.52 in benefits. Ida made off with a cool $20,889.52 of free money provided at taxpayer expense This forced transfer of wealth looks more like communism than American capitalism.
What is the solution to this dilemma? Why not try a tax-payer revolt? Americans should rise up and demand that the system be fixed. This is truly our patriotic duty. We need to throw anyone out of office who tries to persuade us otherwise. Of course, President Bush is on the right track with his campaign to create personal investment accounts. If anything, his proposals dont go far enough. Americans need to recognize that Social Security is an outmoded social welfare system, and they also need to garner the courage to fix it or scrap it altogether.