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Fifty Years of Social Security [1935-1985: excerpts]
United States government ^ | 1985 | website of the United States government

Posted on 05/29/2024 3:56:58 AM PDT by daniel1212

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Supplemental:

1990 Amendments...Liberalized the definition of disability for disabled widow(er)s by making it consistent with that for disabled workers....

Extended benefits to spouses whose marriage to the worker is otherwise invalid, if the spouse was living with the worker before he or she died or filed for benefits....

Extended coverage to employees of state and local governments who are not covered by a retirement plan.

1994 Amendments...

Established the Social Security Administration as an independent agency, effective March 31, 1995...

Restricted DI and SSI benefits payable to drug addicts and alcoholics by creating sanctions for failing to get treatment, limiting their enrollment to 3 years, and requiring that those receiving DI benefits have a representative payee (formerly required only of SSI recipients)....

Reallocated taxes from the OASI fund to the DI fund....

1996 Amendments...

Prohibited DI and SSI eligibility to individuals whose disability is based on drug addiction or alcoholism.

1999 Amendments...

Provided disabled recipients with vouchers they can use to purchase rehabilitative services from public or private providers.

Extended Medicare coverage for up to 4.5 additional years for disabled recipients who work...

-https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/crsleghist2.html

Note:

Federal SSI payments and administrative costs are financed from Federal Government general revenues. - https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/progdesc/sspus/assistance-programs.html

1 posted on 05/29/2024 3:56:58 AM PDT by daniel1212
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To: daniel1212

Then a Dem government taxed your contributions...


2 posted on 05/29/2024 4:00:52 AM PDT by Does so ( 🇺🇦....We are in the later stages of a Communist takeover...)
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To: Does so

Complete Ponzi scheme. Legal, yes.. but a ponzi.

Predictions of running out of “money” is a scare tactic. Always remember, “money” is actually debt. It is paper and ink, and can be printed at will to the moon. In fact, it has been printed to the moon.

SS must and will be eventually replaced, after a currency Reset, and a return to real Organic-Constitutional PM-backed money.


3 posted on 05/29/2024 4:08:58 AM PDT by C210N (Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.)
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To: C210N

+1


4 posted on 05/29/2024 4:15:06 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (It's not "Quiet Quitting" -- it's "Going Galt".)
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To: daniel1212

The first person to collect Social Security benefits, Ida Mae Fuller, paid a total of $24.75 (equivalent to $494 in 2023) in Social Security taxes over a period of three years.

During her retirement, Fuller collected a total of $22,888.92 (equivalent to $497,793 in 2023) in Social Security benefits.


5 posted on 05/29/2024 4:22:37 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: Does so

Contributions? I don’t recall having a choice on whether or not to pay.


6 posted on 05/29/2024 4:22:38 AM PDT by abb
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To: DuncanWaring
The first person to collect Social Security benefits, Ida Mae Fuller, paid a total of $24.75 (equivalent to $494 in 2023) in Social Security taxes over a period of three years.

Mainly bcz she died in 1975 at age 100!

During her retirement, Fuller collected a total of $22,888.92 (equivalent to $497,793 in 2023) in Social Security benefits.

While running an errand she dropped by the Rutland Social Security office to ask about possible benefits. She would later observe: "It wasn't that I expected anything, mind you, but I knew I'd been paying for something called Social Security and I wanted to ask the people in Rutland about it."

Her claim was taken by Claims Clerk, Elizabeth Corcoran Burke, and transmitted to the Claims Division in Washington, D.C. for adjudication. The case was adjudicated and reviewed and sent to the Treasury Department for payment in January 1940. The claims were grouped in batches of 1,000 and a Certification List for each batch was sent to Treasury. Miss Fuller's claim was the first one on the first Certification List and so the first Social Security check, check number 00-000-001, was issued to Ida May Fuller in the amount of $22.54 and dated January 31, 1940. - https://www.ssa.gov/history/imf.html

7 posted on 05/29/2024 4:31:47 AM PDT by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)
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To: abb

“Contributions? I don’t recall having a choice on whether or not to pay.”

It is a choice, if you aren’t happy, it is your fault.


8 posted on 05/29/2024 4:40:45 AM PDT by wrench
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To: daniel1212

Was looking through my momentos box and found grandfathers old billfold. Still had his original 1935 ss card in pristine shape and my grandmothers college photo.


9 posted on 05/29/2024 4:42:30 AM PDT by Jolla
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To: daniel1212
I recently applied online for my SS benefits now that I'm an old bastard and was asked to go the the local SS office to provide a copy of my birth certificate.

I went yesterday and waited four hours to see an agent. The waiting room was loaded with people 25-30 years old with Mexican passports.

They were being brought in by the bus load; well, 15 passenger vans, actually.

They had to lock the doors at noon because they didn't think they could process those already waiting by COB (4:00 PM). While I waited until 2:00 PM, 2 van loads were turned away.

Social security is doomed.

10 posted on 05/29/2024 4:54:12 AM PDT by Living Free in NH
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To: daniel1212

495.00 in todays money a month. We’d have people really living on the streets with that amount.


11 posted on 05/29/2024 4:59:22 AM PDT by napscoordinator (DeSantis is a beast! Florida is the freest state in the country! )
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To: daniel1212

We are approximately 300 trillion in underfunded liabilities debt because of SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Government Pensions, etc. This explains the Biolabs and vaccines


12 posted on 05/29/2024 5:09:02 AM PDT by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: daniel1212
"We adopted the modern Social Security system at a time when the average person died before they were old enough to get Social Security."

Newt Gingrich stated on December 2, 2016 in a radio interview.

I think that sums up Government’s actions in most programs sold to benefit it’s citizens…..

13 posted on 05/29/2024 5:47:14 AM PDT by Lockbox (politicians, they all seemed like game show hosts to me.... Sting…)
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To: daniel1212
The original Social Security started out with fairly good intentions. It was to provide a stipend for people in their old age who have worked all their lives, paying into the system with a simple FICA tax. Even back then, it was not intended that anybody could survive economically on Social Security alone. It was still expected that the elderly would have additional income/wealth to make ends meet or be taken in by younger family members. The Social Security was meant to keep them out of breadlines and allow them to get some groceries or whatnot.

I know this is hard to believe but back in 1935, employees FICA tax was just one percent of their income (with their employers paying another one percent) up to a maximum of $3,000 a year.

The above is a classic example of the government getting their foot in the door with a tax that just keeps increasing as time goes on. Nowadays, the FICA burden is 15.3% of income (with employers still paying half) up to an income of $168,600 in 2024.

Now Social Security is extended to younger people with "disabilities". I personally know somebody who went on SSI in his mid 30s because he had bad knees and could not do his job anymore (tiling). He was offered an office job by his employer but declined and went on lifetime SSI instead.

This is not how the system was supposed to work. It has bloated into another welfare system as the original plan of paying into the system over a long career so that you do not go hungry in old age has gone by the wayside.

14 posted on 05/29/2024 6:01:36 AM PDT by SamAdams76 (6,575,474 Truth | 87,429,044 Twitter)
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To: Jolla
Was looking through my momentos box and found grandfathers old billfold. Still had his original 1935 ss card in pristine shape and my grandmothers college photo.

Quite the find, thank God.

15 posted on 05/29/2024 6:11:04 AM PDT by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)
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To: SamAdams76
The above is a classic example of the government getting their foot in the door with a tax that just keeps increasing as time goes on. Nowadays, the FICA burden is 15.3% of income (with employers still paying half) up to an income of $168,600 in 2024. Now Social Security is extended to younger people with "disabilities". I personally know somebody who went on SSI in his mid 30s because he had bad knees and could not do his job anymore (tiling). He was offered an office job by his employer but declined and went on lifetime SSI instead

Social Security has expanded, while contraception and welfare is much to blame for deficients. And I am quite sure I know someone else who scammed her way into SSDI. However, the gov. states:

SSI is financed by general funds of the U.S. Treasury — personal income taxes, corporate taxes, and other taxes. Social Security taxes collected under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) or the Self-Employment Contributions Act (SECA) do not fund the SSI program.

16 posted on 05/29/2024 6:46:02 AM PDT by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)
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To: abb

What was said in 1964...

https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssa/usa1964-2.html

Compulsory

“Another important principle is that to the extent possible coverage is compulsory. A society cannot be secure if large numbers of its members are not protected against the loss of earnings that results from the retirement, disability, or death of the family provider.

If the program were not compulsory, many of the people who need its protection most would not participate. Many low income workers, for example, as much as they might recognize the need to protect themselves, would choose not to pay social security tax contributions because of the difficulty they have in meeting their current needs.

In the end they would have to be supported through assistance from the general revenues of the Government.”


17 posted on 05/29/2024 6:55:33 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar ( Government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is force!--G. Washington)
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To: daniel1212

When SS was first formed, you could retire at 62 years of age, BUT the average life span then was 57 years.
Then came penicillin and other antibiotics. Life span took off like a rocket!

Back about twenty years ago, AARP magazine had an article on why the SS system is NOT A PONZI SCHEME!

Ponzi schemes always collapse when new suckers, er, that is contributors, do not join at the bottom. Since Social Security had not collapsed, that was proof it was not a Ponzi Scheme.

A few pages on in the same issue, Jane Briant Quinn had an article on HOW the SS system was set up. without saying the word “Ponzi” she showed how it was set up just like a Ponzi scheme but with with new born people being FORCED to join at the bottom.

Since the US has promoted ZPG (Zero Population Growth) and abortions, there are fewer new compulsory people being born at the bottom, so the borders have to be opened and allow foreigners in to take up the slack. As we have been told in the past, the SS system problems is just the government “kicking the can down the road” for future administrations to deal with.


18 posted on 05/29/2024 7:08:22 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar ( Government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is force!--G. Washington)
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To: daniel1212
Thanks for clarification but our tax dollars nonetheless funding young and mostly able people to not have to work the rest of their lives.

That just irks me to no end. I can understand, for example, a true disability that prevents one from doing a certain job (i.e. construction) but that should not preclude one from having a desk job inside the construction trailer or another job that does not require manual labor.

I have a relative that works for a cement company and ended up getting disabled. Now he works as a dispatcher for that same company and tells the trucks where to go.

19 posted on 05/29/2024 7:18:04 AM PDT by SamAdams76 (6,575,474 Truth | 87,429,044 Twitter)
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To: SamAdams76
a true disability that prevents one from doing a certain job (i.e. construction) but that should not preclude one from having a desk job inside the construction trailer or another job that does not require manual labor.

But it seems threat to psychological health may justify abortion, likewise disability $.

Related: https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3994981/posts?page=22#22

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3808247/posts?page=16#16

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4125609/posts?page=67#67

20 posted on 05/29/2024 8:09:36 AM PDT by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)
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