Reply To: To get from here, to where we want to be, the Social Security Question
Hello, Helot!
This is a matter that has long occupied a place in my mind, seeing as my own mother, who is currently 98 has long been a SS.Medicare recipient as her sole source of sustenance. What would she do if if it all just stopped tomorrow? -especially the tens-of-thousands of dollars bills she incurrs when she has to go to the hospital?
Approaching such an issue from that standpoint though uses emotionalism to justify oppression, control, and robbery.
Our observation should rather be of how such a diabolical system and tyranny, which claims to ‘liberate and help’ people, has instead created these circumstances where so many have become dependent upon oppression, tyranny and robbery. Even with SS. my mother really wouldn’t be able to live anywhere but the poor-house (err…or it’s modern-day equivalent: Subsidized housing) were it not for the fact that she lives in her own mobile home on my property. There aren’t too many places in America where one can live on $1300 a month….unless you live in low cost-of-living area and own your own place outright and only have to pay for food and utilities.
But, were it not for all of the subsizied housing, and Medicare, just think how much cheaper everything would be?! Used to be that if you were poor, you could find cheap housing…just not the best. Today, that’s not the case, because if every landlord can get market-value rent (from the tyrants who destroyed the actual market) by signing up to accept subsidized tenants. Medical bills could be a TENTH of what they currently are were it not for Medicare/Medicaid/government-controlled insurance/etc. and the limiting of competition caused by Uncle’s “regulations” which decree how many hospital beds there can be in a given area, etc.
Had it not been for SS being created when my mother was 12 years old, perhaps she would have been more careful to marry men who were responsible good providers, instead of men who were at the bottom of the totem pole and never had anything.
It’s got to stop; it’s going to stop- whether through inflation, or economic crash or whatever, and we’re always being warned that “The system is bankrupt and can’t continue” (I’ve been hearing this for over forty years, but in reality, there is nothing to bankrupt, since as long as there are tax slaves to mulct, there will be loot to be redistributed) -yet no one ever prepares. They could announce that it is going to end next year..or in 5 years..or in 30 years…yet no one would ever do anything differently, they would just wait for the end and then scramble, as those who are fully dependent upon such a system always have, which is why they are dependent upon such a system.
The carnage that the system has created though- such as the destruction of the close family, enabled by the hope that the state will provide, so one can just dump their kids in daycare, or even have kids that they can’t afford to support nor care for (Which will also be provided for by the state) and the “independence” that such has created, has occurred over the course of several generations of this system being in place…and of course, such evils would not magically be cured overnight, but would also take at least as much time to rectify themselves….but as stated before, this is going to happen anyway…and IS happening…..but few seem to care or to take any steps to deal with it in their own lives. Throughout history (even with all of the entitlements!) there has always been a segment of the population which has been poor- whether through their own negligence and dysfunction or just happenstance…but there have always been also been those who help- whether family or charities, etc. Things actually worked a lot better under the latter…and it tended to discourage irresponsible behavior and illegitimate kids in non-families…whereas the former only encourages such. “You get more of what you subsidize”.
The dysfunction of the SS system, and it’s truly absurd economics is really illustrated by the example of my mother’s first husband: A guy who worked at nothing but the lowest-paying jobs from c. 1940 to 1980. I estimated what he “paid in”, being generous and then even doubling it, just for good measure, vs. what was collected by him for 23 years; two ex-wives; two disabled daughters, in terms of actual payments (One daughter and my mother collecting ‘on his account’ for over 40 years now) + Medicare…and it comes out to many millions of dollars…magically from (at best-case scenario) $20K having been paid in. <$20K (in actuality, closer to $10K, I doubled it) somehow entitles one to many millions paid by others……an economy that can only exist via government- because in real (sound) economics which are not dependent upon coercion and robbery such metrics are no more possible than a rabbit laying an egg.