Social Security

Social Security was really not designed for individuals but for America itself.  It is intended for ALL the people in our country.  Just as police and fire departments protect their city, Social Security provides another kind of protection for a greater community.  

Many of the recipients of Social security helped build the community they live in.  Now, as they grow older, the purchases they continue to make become transferred into wages that are paid to workers at grocery stores, drug stores and gasoline stations, and also generate orders for more merchandise from suppliers.  In this way the recipients of the benefit payments continue to support their community even as they provide for their own personal needs. 

It is sometimes said that social Security provides a safety net for people who did not adequately prepare for retirement.  That’s true.  It also provides a safety net for people who did provide for retirement but because of reasons now beyond their control find those pensions became insufficient.  Other people planned as well as they could for retirement but simply outlived their plan – they, or their spouse lived “too long”.  Social Security does not ask you how long you want to live.  

Social Security was never intended to constitute our only source of retirement funding. We do need to prepare for our own retirement and that is our own responsibility.  Some of us recall when President Bush said that Individual  Retirement Accounts “will be yours – and the government cannot take it a way from you!”  But it has always been the government that has come to the aid of our citizens after the corporations and markets have failed and turned against them.  Our government has not abandoned its citizens as many corporations have done, even in the very recent past.  It is not going to merge with other governments and it does not collapse when the markets fail.