“However the age at which one got a Social Security Number in the mid 1970’s is not very important. While it may have been a technical Federal Requirement at that time - not sure it was or not... it was not uncommon as a teenager then to get a job and not have one at all... The employer just didn’t report you as an official employee.”
I cannot say what happened in the 60s, but in 1971 whe I took my first job as a sacker in a grocery store in Oklahoma (not exactly the cultural center of the universe) I had to have a SSN to work. I even recently looked at my yearly SS printout of withholding history and it shows my SSN withholding for 1971 while I was still in High School.
If the young Barrack Obama worked at an Ice Cream place in the mid 70s without a SSN, then his employer was commiting tax fraud as was Obama. It WAS a requirement in the 70s to pay SS taxes EVEN if you didn’t make enough to pay federal income tax or even file a return.
I got my SSN when I was a baby. My first job was in ‘74 or ‘75 and I had to use my SSN. The boss was a crook and never submitted our withholdings so we filed on him.
“I cannot say what happened in the 60s, but in 1971 whe I took my first job...I had to have a SSN to work...”
In 1967 my first job was taking inventory in a drug store, and yes, had to get a SSN.
Yes - I agree with what you report ... That was what was supposed to be...
However ‘things were quite loose in those times’... Any small business could get away with cash under the table - and no reporting... no withholding - no social security matching payments - no problem at all. It was quite common...
I don’t wish to appear to be taking up for Osama Obama - I despise the man... but expecting the 1960s and 1970s or even the 1990s to be like NOW is expecting way too much if you are speaking of - ‘by the book employment records’...
I ran a small business making lots of revenue in those times and I know how easy it was then to classify someone as a ‘contractor’ - or just pay under the table - all my competitors did it.
That’s just how it was then... Today employers who use ‘illegal aliens’ are doing the same things and worse - despite the fearsome Federal ‘Rules’...