You know the Social Security envelopes some of us get in the mail every year? The ones with green typing. Inside, there is a break down of your work history. It tells you how much you’ve paid into the system, and based on what has been collected so far, the amount you will get at retirement age. I got one the other day and I felt old just reading it. According to my statement, I have been working in four different decades! They have also made a determination, from this information, that when I retire, I’ll get this amount. This amount? I laughed out loud. This amount wouldn’t even pay my rent today. What the hell is it going to do for me in twenty years? Pay for a weeks worth of food? Or a tank of gas for my car? No wait, there isn’t going to be petroleum-based fuel in 20 years. Silly me.All that is going to be left is our IRAs, our 401s, and any profit-sharing plans. If, we were lucky enough to work for a company that offered benefits. If not, oh well, because I am sorry to say, Social Security is headed for insolvency. In the future, the fund is going to run out. Yep. That’s right. Zip, zero, zilch, not a. Not a? Yea, not a. Not a single penny.

Since, according to some, funding will run out in a few decades, shouldn’t we ask ourselves, why? I might be able to tell you why. The true meaning of Social Security is old-age, survivors, and disability insurance. That’s retirees, children under 18 who’s parents died, and the handicapped. Three different kinds of disbursement. We all knew this one way or the other, right? Wrong!

Did you know that a host of other government programs also siphon money from the fund mainly made from FICA deductions from pay-roll checks. That’s right. Social Security is robbed by unemployment insurance. Medicare and Medicaid are pulled from S. S. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, SSI, and some agency called State Children’s Health Insurance program. Should I go on? Its depressing.

What do they do in Washington? Whenever some program there needs money, do they go and dip from the S. S. kettle. Someone in appropriations who probably possess this tactic and uses it as a back-up if no funding can be obtained from else where. Get it form the FICA fund! That trick will soon go by the way-side. With the increase in our elderly population, (thanks baby-boomers) there will be less people paying into FICA. When we consider that in 2009, 650 billion dollars, in benefits, will be paid out to 51 million people creating a whirlpool, draining the account like a disgruntled girlfriend. Social Security, as we once knew it, is doomed.

Make your money now, America. Keep your IRAs, 401s, and savings going. You are going to need all we can get in our retirements. If Social Security goes under, so do all the associated programs. With the elimination of funds comes the possibility of the entire nation having to help an enormous population of people who find themselves in need. In need of what was taken away from them.

Let us save our good-byes. Save it for the inevitable. When Social Security dies, we can no longer look forward to a half way decent retirement, then there will be two things before us. A wasted work career and a uncertainty of having enough. Enough to live, enough to survive.

Jeff Payne

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