What is Social Security

[Richard Arnold <keycon@mindspring.com>]

On the opening page to this forum called "Introduction and Discussion
on Values", there were several questions posed to be answered by
the discussion participants of this forum.

The very first question was "What is Social Security?"

The Social Security program is a sham that has the root of its
current problems caused by a fundamental flaw in its design. Social
Security taxes are not saved or invested in any way. Instead, taxes
paid by today's workers are used to pay benefits to today's retirees.
Workers have to hope that when they retire another generation of
workers will pay the taxes to provide their benefits. Like any
pyramid scheme, this system cannot be sustained in the face of
changing demographics.

Without major, fundamental changes in the way the SS program is
structured, we are only fooing ourselves to think that future
generations can support such a scheme. Value has nothing to do with
what is wrong with SS today.

I may come across as hard-nosed about this subject, but it will
take a hard-nosed attitude to make people start thinking about
clear and viable choices for change.

I am not in favor of throwing our seniors to the wind. I have an
elderly mother, too. But, I too, am not that far from retirement
age and I know that what we are doing now is not the answer. I do
not want my child and his children to still be sitting here discussing
this issue when they get to my age. We must correct the problem
now. Do it right the first time.

This is a golden opportunity to finally start getting government
out of our private lives. Americans have always shown they understand
values. Long before FDR and SS,long before government decided it
knew what was best for us; Americans took care of their own. We
are a good and fair people. If government will let us, we can show
them how good we are. But as long as Americans believe and think
that government is the answer to all of their problems, we will
have problems.

You cannot improve a bad program and the current SS program is
fundamentally wrong and flawed. If private enterprise operated a
system such as SS, they would go to jail immediately.

Richard Arnold