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AUTHOR: R Quinn on 4/13/2025
The first Social Security retirement check was issued to Ida M. Fuller on January 31, 1940, for an amount of $22.54. She had paid SS taxes a little less than three years. She died Jan 27, 1975 at 100 years old. It’s a pretty good bet she didn’t pay for her own benefit.
But that is not the point. The point is Social Security has worked quite well paying benefits for 85 years. The is no justification to attack it. There is no reason to screw it up now.
The SSA, estimates that about half of the population aged 65 or older live in households that receive at least 50 percent of their family income from Social Security benefits and about 25 percent of aged households rely on Social Security benefits for at least 90 percent of their family income.”
All the rhetoric about its future, it being a scam, a Ponzi scheme, I could do better investing the taxes myself, the money was stolen, I paid for my benefits is noise, nonsense.
Tens of millions of retirees, surviving spouse, ex-spouses, dependent children and disabled adults and children depend on the program.
Social Security is essential to the economic and social wellbeing of the United States.
A form of SS is not unique to the US. Well over 100 countries have similar programs. Many pay higher benefits replacing more than 40% or so of pre-retirement income on average. In many cases worker taxes to fund their program are higher than in the US.
For reasons unknown to me, many Americans can’t make the connection between paying taxes and the services and programs we want and need. There are those of us who don’t use some programs so don’t see the need to pay taxes. Seniors against property taxes comes to mind.
To illustrate sharing costs, New Jersey now charges owners of electric vehicles and extra $250 when they register their vehicle each year. Why? Because they don’t pay the gasoline tax that funds road maintenance. I bet there are EV owners who see that as unfair.
This is a society of 340 million very different people, people with varied abilities and needs. There are winners and losers, doers and takers, and that will never change. But it would be nice to think we are also a functioning, caring society.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
However, you forget the real story about Ida Mae Fuller. Yes, it is true that she worked and paid into Social Security for just less than three years, from the spring of 1937 to November 1939 and paid a total of $24.75 in Social Security taxes. She filed her retirement claim on November 4, 1939, when she reached age 65.
What you don’t know, is that the initial Social Security legislation provided:
SEC. 202. (a) Every qualified individual (as defined in section 210) shall be entitled to receive, with respect to the period beginning on the date he attains the age of sixty-five, or on January 1, 1942, whichever is the later
Yes, folks, between 1935 and 1939, when she filed her claim, Congress had already amended the program to improve benefits for those who would not otherwise be eligible for benefits.
And, so it continues today – using Social Security benefits to buy votes, without properly funding the commitments – sending the bill to generations too young to vote and generations yet unborn.
And, no, it isn’t the Boomers. Much of Boomer employment occurred after the 1983 Amendments, where they covered the promises made to the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation.
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Al Lindquist:
What about programs we don’t want and need like PBS and Planned Parenthood–all of these programs you refer to are run by the politicians and bureaucrats and then we wonder why they are in trouble–$36 trillion in debt now who created that mess?
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We need and millions want both PBS and NPR they are important parts of the press and free speech and they have some very good educational shows. To simply dismiss them as liberal is not accurate.
Planned Parenthood is far more than providing abortions. They provide needed health services to poor women. Some people NEED them.
This spending is not even rounding errors.
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The debt is mostly from defense and entitlements spending, like SS and Medicare. And also occasional bailouts, 08 & COVID stimulus for example. NPR is not a significant contributor to the national debt. But if we’re talking about getting rid of services I personally don’t use, how about we chuck the VA too, and all those silly tax exemptions for religiously-affiliated institutions? After all, I don’t use those services so why should I help fund them? See why this is a silly argument to make?
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Agree Make a positive difference in someone’s life today. Bill Mitchell
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