Posted on 12/20/2007 10:49:56 AM PST by shortstop
Damn Social Security and the thieves who thought it up.
That's my attitude.
As I make a list of reasons why I hate the government, Social Security has to be near the top. It is, for me, the most recognizable and intrusive tyranny in my life.
And that's saying a lot.
We sadly live in a day when the strangling grip of government chokes the life and liberty out of working Americans all across this country. We are little more than sharecroppers and slaves in a system of taxation and regulation which dictates everything in our lives – from what we can build on our property to how much water there is in our toilet. The lion's share of our labor and wealth is confiscated for bloated bureaucracies and covetous welfare parasites. We are burdened by a government that has long since stopped being what the Founders envisioned.
So when you're making a list of reasons to hate the government, you better have lots of time and lots of paper.
But today we're going to talk about Social Security.
And how Social Security has deprived me of my life's dream.
First, the dream. One evening, when I was 19, in a trailer in the Arizona desert near Winslow, I decided I wanted land. Country land. As I stood there talking with my host, he told me about the five acres upon which his trailer sat, and his plans for it.
And it fired my imagination. I thought of all the things you could do with a few acres. And for years I've thought about it. I've read and planned and daydreamed.
I want some country land. Where it rains and the trees grow and you can pasture cows and plant crops and stock your pond with fish. I want chickens and sheep and a woodlot.
I want it for the peace of it, for the hard calloused-hands work of it, for the fruitfulness of it and for the self-reliance of it. It's my heritage, and I'd like it to be my future.
But I am not a man of means. I'm a wage earner. I'm a middle-income guy with a lot of kids and all the money I make goes to supporting my family.
And the government. My family budget has always been pressed toward insolvency by the voracious, thieving hand of government. Year after year I have cut corners and shorted my children while money I've earned has been siphoned away by a government that takes it before I see it. I have less and less and the government takes more and more. All of society is entitled to my paycheck – except me.
And so at 48 I am no nearer my country land than I was at 19.
Which gets me back to Social Security.
I was going through some papers the other day and found that little mailing the Social Security Administration sends out periodically, the one that shows how much of your money they've taken from you, year by year. I looked at the numbers and added them up and the total struck me odd. It occurred to me, looking at the numbers, that I had essentially paid a mortgage over the near 35 years of my working life. A mortgage that, applied to land, would have long since given me my dream.
And my freedom. And a great deal more security and prosperity than Social Security will ever provide.
See, the idea of land is not just some country idyll. It's also a practical objective, a means to an independent end. While the government wants me to be dependent in my old age on a miserly monthly check, I would rather provide myself with the means of self-support.
With just a few acres of land, tillable and forested, I would with simple labor be able to provide myself with food and heat. I could raise and grow what I ate and cut and chop what I burned. I could become at least in part self-sufficient.
And that is a far-preferable retirement plan to a Social Security check. In the name of providing for my old age, the government has taken away my ability to provide for myself in my old age. Instead of investing my income as I see fit – in land or in anything else – it is stolen by the government and put into a Ponzi scheme that has no realistic likelihood of being solvent when it comes my turn to retire. To promise me security, the government must deprive me of liberty.
I have lost the ability to use my own money as I see fit. I have lost the ability to provide for my own retirement. I have lost the simplest right of a free man – the right to live by the sweat of my own brow, and not have it stolen away by a covetous and avaricious government in whose eyes I am little more than a beast of burden.
Country land would provide many of my needs until I grew too enfeebled to work it. Then I could sell it to get myself the care I need. In time I would die, but I would go to my grave having paid my own way and having lived as I chose.
But those are things the government now deprives me of.
I have clung to a dream, and one simple tax has destroyed it. My dream is going into some drunk's SSI check, or into the rat hole of the welfare/bureaucracy complex, the vast industry that lives off the life's blood of Americans who work.
I love my country. I would die for the Constitution. But I hate my government. I hate what generations of snakes in elective office have done to the greatest nation and the freest people ever to grace the earth.
We should be free to plan for our old age they way we want. To invest our money in land or a business or in stocks and bonds. We should be free from ridiculous taxes that don't deliver what they promise. We should be free from the socialist dreams of long-dead New Dealers.
But we are not free – we are Americans.
And damn the men who have made us this way.
I have had those exact same thoughts myself. I told my wife long ago, that I was born 150-200 years too late.
With all the calculating going on here I wonder if anyone could figure out how much money is being collected from illegal aliens? I think thats why the governmet won’t do anything about illegal immigration they need to keep their ponzi scheme alive!
You trying to confuse us with facts?
Friendly readability hint: only one comma is ever needed. A space after said single comma will help the rest of us immensely. :)
Great article. This is one subject that never gets the attention it deserves.
Too much reason for a topic intended to produce hysteria. Cut it out.
HA!!
I *don't* think so, he's serious as a heart attack.
...*scary* as hell.
English is my 2nd language, but I’ll try harder.
” I tried to opt out of socialist security when I started work 38 years ago. Of course I failed. A few years ago I developed a “present worth” spreadsheet of the opportunity lost because of that ponzi scheme. (I have since lost the file.) I used the actual numbers of what was stolen from me plus my employers’ contribution and a conservative S&P 500-based mutual fund growth over those years. The amount that would be available to me today was huge. Not only would the earnings be several times greater than what I will get from SS, I would be able to pass the balance to my family when I croak. Stinking socialist robbery.”
Sadly the truth as you have noted above isn’t known to the general public. They also don’t realize that you can get taxed on social security....
Nice scheme, taxed once to develop the fund, tax you again when you get what you paid in......
Fixing / eliminating this should be question #1 in all the debates........
And there's only one guy with the nads to bring it up.
That is not relevant to what I said.
Besides, the excess collections are a temporary phenomenon, unless the Social Security taxes are raised, or the benefits are cut.
Sure it is.
napscoordinator said Social Security taxes were only a small part of the tax base, you said "No they aren't, SS spends $600B a year", and I merely pointed out that the situation is even worse than what you said. ;-)
well cry me a river you lazy bum.
“It’s nearly all I have, after working 35 years”
you ever heard of a savings account?
read my lips I DO NOT CARE! i have paid for twenty years and will have to pay for the next thirty. i hate everyone on SSi, i hate everyone who voted for SSi, i hate the whole system because it is screwing me. giving the chance i will kick every last one of you deadbeats to curb. it is a SCAM and it needs to be stopped.
the government has no right to take that money from me and give it to you. if you believe it does then you are on the wrong forum.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.