Social Security Payments to Go Paperless Beginning May 1

Fox News ^ | 4/22/11

[Libloather]

Social Security Payments to Go Paperless Beginning May 1
Published April 22, 2011 | FoxNews.com

Social Security checks are going paperless beginning May 1, as the U.S. Treasury Department retires paper checks for electronic payments.

The cost-saving measure, which won't be fully implemented until May 2013, is aimed at reducing government expenses by $1 billion over the next decade as millions of baby boomers and others apply for monthly federal benefits. Federal benefits will also be paid electronically to recipients of veterans and disability payments, the Treasury Department announced Friday.

Eighteen million baby boomers are expected to go onto the retirement rolls in the next five years.

Direct deposit has long been an option for Social Security recipients and others, and in fact, most recipients of federal checks already get payments electronically.

But electronic payments are still precarious to some, especially Depression-era babies who never learned to trust banks. Currently, 11 million people still get government checks in the mail.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

A single kill switch is much easier to control the people than a thousand kill switches.

Just like control of the Internet, when Obammie the Commie started flapping his lips about needing a kill switch.

Paper currency allows us to conduct transactions privately. Once it goes digital, there will be no privacy and the government can negate any transaction or any transactor it decides to.

[Balding_Eagle]

Paperless also gives them access to your bank account. It’s called tracking, snooping, mining....the road to confiscation....

Solved by having a separate bank account in a separate bank, just as one would for the monthly auto-bill payments. That builds a firewall.

[The_Reader_David]

But it matters not whether the “single kill switch” is attached to a printer or to an internet banking node. Sending Social Security payments digitally does not make it any easier for the government to not send them, only makes it cheaper for them to send them. Not getting the electronic payment will cause as much outrage as not getting a check, neither more nor less. SS payments never came as cash so the ‘private transaction’ argument is void: one has to cash the check and get cash, or one has to make a withdrawal of the electronic payment, either way, the transaction can be traced until one has the cash. Give it up. This is a good development, even though it comes on Obama’s watch.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

You’re being sarcastic, right? I’m going to assume that you are, that you really don’t believe this has anything to do with efficiency and saving money...from the asshole that threw few billion at ACORN, that he really gives a crap about saving money. Please.

[The_Reader_David]

Given the current political pressure to cut government spending, one can expect the Obama administration to come up with a few economies to point to in their propaganda. This is one. Even the stopped clock is right twice a day.

[The_Reader_David]

Paperless means they need your account number and routing number. You don’t think the Federal government already has the account and routing number to which government checks were deposited? I bet they do. If you’re that paranoid, open a separate account for receiving government payments other than the one you use for everything else.

[Sacajaweau]

I did open a totally separate account.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

To cut government spending? Are you serious?

They argued from 100 billion, down to 60, down to 30, and then we find out that those “cuts” included allocations that were not spent and that had already been withdrawn.

This administration is literally spending the US economy and the US dollar to death. They have no intention to cut spending truly.

Their goal is to spend America into bankruptcy and to consolidate as much power centrally as they possible can. They want a soviet-style government in America.

Digital payments of all forms is one piece of that power pie. The ultimate would be to convert to a full digital currency, for then they would be able to database every detail of our lives and “cut us off” if they deem us an enemy of the state. But replacing a paper currency with a digital one must be done veeerrryyy gradually through incremental steps. One of those steps is to convert as many financial transactions to a digital medium as possible.

I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that the implementation and maintenance of this computer system will end up costing as much as the paper checks. I know they’ll spin it as a cost savings, but we all know that the proposed cost of a computer system and the real cost are often miles apart.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Hey, FRiend...I don’t mean to come across as argumentative or as a contrarian. I just do not trust the communists currently in power and I am suspicious of anything they do that empowers Statism.

I know where you’re coming from and don’t dispute that it would be good to cut costs wherever possible, especially through automation. The digitization of our financial transactions just doesn’t sit well with me. That’s all.

[The_Reader_David]

Thank you. I'd considered replying to your previous post, but thought I'd seem argumentative.

I can see being skeptical about or even hostile to some 'digital economy' measures. I just don't see getting rid of government-issued paper checks (which get processed through the electronic banking system anyway) in favor of electronic funds transfer as one of them.