Stretch here...The Old Geezer... Remember, folks, even tho it is a ponzi scheme---then and now.... At the time it was started we were in the greatest depression the world has ever known. Most people had little education. Only the wealthy could finish school and college was only a dream. Kids quit school at 14 or 15 to help out. ten and fifteen cents an hour was the going rate for common labor. The small towns had no industry. There was no chance of the old folks (old at about 40) trying to save a cent. They never got caught up. I remember when Henry Ford announced that every worker will be paid $5.00 per day... And that was a fortune. But there were no jobs to be had...NONE, ZILCH, NADA... And many of the old folks on social security are from those working days... My mother never worked. My father eaked out a miserable "getby" living on a small farm. Never worked in a place where they paid a wage to pay into social security. When my dad was too old to work he lived off the genorosity of his children. He never paid in a cent and lived to 69. never drew a penny because he never paid into it. There were some "welfare programs, but he would never accept such. "No relief for him" That was shameful....
Wages didn't rise much until during the 70's. Three and four dollars an hour was a good wage then. I graduated high school but couldn't even think of college because I had to contribute so much to the family. I worked in offices, meter readers, taxi driver, small factories that paid next to nothing...anything that paid a little more than what I was earning. I went to work for Studebaker Corp. where I earned about three dollars an hour, but they went bankrupt in the early fifties. I finally got into construction. Our union finally got to $5.00 an hour in 1970.. And that was a big wage. Those are the wages on which I am drawing my social security. Many, many old people today are drawing social security on those kind of wages... $2, $3,$4, an hour. Many were never able to save anything.
Today's retirees are coming from a different world.. a world where they earned a huge amount of money compared to whose who worked in the 30's and 40's. Today one can put away a little...many even a lot. But it wasn't there then for the old folks today. The wealthy living in Florida in retirement homes were the fortunate ones who were able to get a good education; ie, the county government workers, the auto workers, supervisors, teachers... and small businessmen, farmers who were able to sell their lands at a huge price.
What I am saying is this: don't be too hard on the old folks drawing SS today. Many aare products of the "GREAT DEPRESSION" of the 30's... I have been lucky. For the past 25 years I have earned enough to save some but got into some real-estate where I made some good money. But, think of the many who had no chance such as I did. The politicians are the ones to blame for the SS fiasco with their greed. If the SS money could have been placed into investment accounts, the interest earned would be astronomical..... and there would be no need for a fix.
You make some good points. Just keep in mind when the greedy crooks try to scare old people into keeping Congress's gravy train going as it has the past 50 years that if private companies spent their pension funds the way Congress has done, their officers would all do jail time. Instead, we have re-elected the looters, letting them buy votes with our pension money so they can stay in office. And now they are trying to convince the gullible that they can be trusted more than the US stock market that would return 4-5 times as much in benefits for only a 3-4% investment of SS funds. I guess that's the beauty of a government school system that teaches little in the way of math and nothing in the way of logic.
I, for one, don't think the folks, at least most of them, who are drawing and have drawn Social Security checks are to blame. Some blame goes to lobbying groups like AARP who have and are fighting reforms that could keep the system viable. The bulk of the blame goes to politicians who have refused, and are refusing, to acknowlege that times have changed and the system needs to adapt. The longer they wait, the bigger the problem gets.
What I am saying is this: don't be too hard on the old folks drawing SS today.