Social Security is NOT going broke!
Social Security has a surplus of 2.76 trillion dollars and can pay out benefits to all eligible Americans until 2033.
Passing legislation that I wrote, which would lift the cap on taxable income above 250,000.00, would extend Social Security solvency for 47 years. And that is exactly what we MUST do!
- Senator Bernie Sanders ( I-VT)
I have several observations to share on this but before I start I have to say this.
My Father was a wonderful, loving man, but like all of us, he was complicated and in retrospect, not right about a number of things. I suspect my kids will say the same of me when I'm gone and that is fine as I'm human, far more human than my Dad ever was.
That said, being raised by a republican man who had a very low opinion of FDR, it was drilled into me at an early age that Social Security was a pyrimid scheme that would never be there for him when he retired. It would especially not be there for me as the pyramid would collapse around itself due to it's wishful thinking design.
So that’s the meme conservatives started since the inception of Social Security in 1935, 79 years ago!
To repeat, that simple but now proven false meme, has carried the day in conservative republican circles for nearly 80 years in spite of literally millions of lives being saved and millions more kept out of abject poverty in their retirement years.
Let that fact sink in for a minute.
Now consider what it takes to debunk that simple, devastating falsehood, to try to get people to understand the importance of this program and the non-stop threat it has been under by republicans across generations since 1935.
This false meme, forwarded as "enlightened thought" came in spite of my Dad actually witnessing old people dying, literally from poverty, during the 3rd great depression starting in 1929. The first being in the 1780’s, and the second in the 1850’s.
In my development as a man, many times I heard this meme repeated over and over again, “Social Security will never be there when I retire”.
I heard it as a child, then watched while my Dad received his social security checks on a regular basis with no problems.
We all heard from Ronald Reagan how Social Security was going broke, then watched as payroll withholding was increased to cover the future of the program. These increases were projected at the establishment of social security but great fanfare was made by the republicans when they actually just did what was projected as the responsible thing to do in the ongoing management of the program.
How long did Social Security last for my Dad?
21 years and he never a missed check! He retired at 58 and passed away just short of his 86th birthday. He collected his first Social Security check at age 65.
So my Dad worked for 40 years and collected Social Security for 21 years. That’s wonderful and great for him. He was blessed with a long healthy life. The system he predicted would never be there for him, was there, consistantly and solidly as it was designed to.
My Mom just turned 90. She's still collecting a percentage of my Dad's Social Security 9 years later. So make that 30 years of payouts to my parents without a glitch.
Here's the really sad thing. Every time she votes, she votes republican all the way down the ticket. If they have an (R) behind their name, that's all she needs to know. And yet, she literally has FDR (D) to thank for the check she gets automatically deposited into her checking account every month. My mind can hardly process this as I write it.
So in the 1980's republicans carried the torch for FDR's enemies but ultimately gave in and administered the program the way they were supposed to. In the 1990's, I still had it embedded in my consciousness that I would never see a dime of social security. All the way into the early 2000's I bought into this made up myth, propogated by descendants of FDR's enemies.
Then I started to realize I had not seen the predicted collapse of the system in the '70's, '80's, 90's or 2000's.
I started to wonder, with forty years of evidence in front of me to the contrary, the enemies of social security were still spewing their venom about its demise... and yet social security was starting to look like a real possibility, even for me! Imagine that.
That's when I finally looked into the details. I may be a bit slow but even I’m able to see when something is working decades beyond when it’s critics predicted it’s downfall.
I ran across Thom Hartmann's brilliant analysis of the 80 year war on everything FDR worked and fought for, simply because FDR thought of it and they didn’t.
Sound familiar?
Yes, this nonsensical partisanship has tormented us for a lot longer than most people imagine.
I started to listen to Bernie Sanders, a Congressman at the time, that the program was fully funded but was being undermined by an inexplicable cap on income.
I learned that those with incomes above 100,000.00 of yearly income actually didn't pay a dime into social security beyond this crazy cap!
Really?
A cap?
Why?
The people who can most afford it, are somehow given a pass beyond a certain income level while the rest of us pay on our entire incomes?
So the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Bill Gates and many others pay their “fair share” into social security in the first few minutes of their earning year, then pay nothing for the next 364 days because, what? They can’t afford it? Are you kidding me?
Who came up with this and why? Well it was actually built into the system from the start to limit the introduction of volatility. The risk of that volatility disapeared decades ago, hence the ever increasing cap to cover the cost of managing payouts.
Since I learned all this, I go way beyond where even Senator Sanders is.
I say eliminate the cap! Completely!
If you make a billion dollars or even millions, you can handle the 7%, or 14% if you’re self employed. I say, if you make that much, it's your patriotic duty to build and grow this program for everyone in the pool. So what if you won't get out of it what you put into it. You'll get to sleep better at night knowing you still have your billions, while your tens of millions goes to help older Americans live comfortably in their retirement years. And if you’re so greedy that the thougt of that bothers you, I actually find myself feeling sorry for you and your inexplicable levels of greed.
Let's talk about why is Social Security not a pyramid scheme. I thought this through and the answer came to me clear as day.
When my Dad retired he was considered solidly middle class. What was that in the early '70's? 20,000.00 That's right, 20 grand. Now go back and figure out what his contribution to the system was over his working life with his income being somewhere around a dollar an hour in 1938 and 10.00 an hour in 1978. . Did he put into the system what he got out of it over his 21 year retirement? No way and the creators of the system knew he would never be able to.
Now let's look at one more very important fact. One generation later when I retired what was I making? Nearly 5 times what my Dad made. Was I rich? Not by a long shot. I did well but I lived in the Silicon Valley in a 1,240 sq. ft. home. Middle class like my parents but my contributions, along with all in my economic strata, were contributing at a far higher rate than my parents did. That is just great in my view as I feel quite privileged to have done so.
So that's the dirty little secret the FDR haters never want you do know. The program is not funded exclusively by the recipients. They put some money in and it earns interest exponentially beyond what a personal retirement plan would due to the sheer size of the pot.
The real secret is the new workforce contibuting to the pool plays a much more significant role that continually builds and grows the system.
In a healthy democracy, every generation does a little better, simply due to the way western economies with progressive tax codes grow.
Ironically, where the whole thing can come under tremendous stress is when the super wealthy suppress wages, especially the way they have in the last 20 – 30 years.
Even with wage suppression, removal of the cap, or increasing it significantly like Senator Sanders proposes, fixes things for a long time.
Remove the cap altogether and it's fixed permanently in my opinion.
What's it going to take for everyone to wake up the way I did?
I don't know.
Are they going to have to see another great depression with elder Americans dying in the cold and in the streets like they were in the 1930's, to bring people back to reality and revolt against the oligarchs that have taken over our democracy?
I sure hope not….
