Posted on 12/20/2007 10:49:56 AM PST by shortstop
Damn Social Security and the thieves who thought it up.
That's my attitude.
As I make a list of reasons why I hate the government, Social Security has to be near the top. It is, for me, the most recognizable and intrusive tyranny in my life.
And that's saying a lot.
We sadly live in a day when the strangling grip of government chokes the life and liberty out of working Americans all across this country. We are little more than sharecroppers and slaves in a system of taxation and regulation which dictates everything in our lives – from what we can build on our property to how much water there is in our toilet. The lion's share of our labor and wealth is confiscated for bloated bureaucracies and covetous welfare parasites. We are burdened by a government that has long since stopped being what the Founders envisioned.
So when you're making a list of reasons to hate the government, you better have lots of time and lots of paper.
But today we're going to talk about Social Security.
And how Social Security has deprived me of my life's dream.
First, the dream. One evening, when I was 19, in a trailer in the Arizona desert near Winslow, I decided I wanted land. Country land. As I stood there talking with my host, he told me about the five acres upon which his trailer sat, and his plans for it.
And it fired my imagination. I thought of all the things you could do with a few acres. And for years I've thought about it. I've read and planned and daydreamed.
I want some country land. Where it rains and the trees grow and you can pasture cows and plant crops and stock your pond with fish. I want chickens and sheep and a woodlot.
I want it for the peace of it, for the hard calloused-hands work of it, for the fruitfulness of it and for the self-reliance of it. It's my heritage, and I'd like it to be my future.
But I am not a man of means. I'm a wage earner. I'm a middle-income guy with a lot of kids and all the money I make goes to supporting my family.
And the government. My family budget has always been pressed toward insolvency by the voracious, thieving hand of government. Year after year I have cut corners and shorted my children while money I've earned has been siphoned away by a government that takes it before I see it. I have less and less and the government takes more and more. All of society is entitled to my paycheck – except me.
And so at 48 I am no nearer my country land than I was at 19.
Which gets me back to Social Security.
I was going through some papers the other day and found that little mailing the Social Security Administration sends out periodically, the one that shows how much of your money they've taken from you, year by year. I looked at the numbers and added them up and the total struck me odd. It occurred to me, looking at the numbers, that I had essentially paid a mortgage over the near 35 years of my working life. A mortgage that, applied to land, would have long since given me my dream.
And my freedom. And a great deal more security and prosperity than Social Security will ever provide.
See, the idea of land is not just some country idyll. It's also a practical objective, a means to an independent end. While the government wants me to be dependent in my old age on a miserly monthly check, I would rather provide myself with the means of self-support.
With just a few acres of land, tillable and forested, I would with simple labor be able to provide myself with food and heat. I could raise and grow what I ate and cut and chop what I burned. I could become at least in part self-sufficient.
And that is a far-preferable retirement plan to a Social Security check. In the name of providing for my old age, the government has taken away my ability to provide for myself in my old age. Instead of investing my income as I see fit – in land or in anything else – it is stolen by the government and put into a Ponzi scheme that has no realistic likelihood of being solvent when it comes my turn to retire. To promise me security, the government must deprive me of liberty.
I have lost the ability to use my own money as I see fit. I have lost the ability to provide for my own retirement. I have lost the simplest right of a free man – the right to live by the sweat of my own brow, and not have it stolen away by a covetous and avaricious government in whose eyes I am little more than a beast of burden.
Country land would provide many of my needs until I grew too enfeebled to work it. Then I could sell it to get myself the care I need. In time I would die, but I would go to my grave having paid my own way and having lived as I chose.
But those are things the government now deprives me of.
I have clung to a dream, and one simple tax has destroyed it. My dream is going into some drunk's SSI check, or into the rat hole of the welfare/bureaucracy complex, the vast industry that lives off the life's blood of Americans who work.
I love my country. I would die for the Constitution. But I hate my government. I hate what generations of snakes in elective office have done to the greatest nation and the freest people ever to grace the earth.
We should be free to plan for our old age they way we want. To invest our money in land or a business or in stocks and bonds. We should be free from ridiculous taxes that don't deliver what they promise. We should be free from the socialist dreams of long-dead New Dealers.
But we are not free – we are Americans.
And damn the men who have made us this way.
Whatever you do people, make sure you vote for a “front runner” who “can win” and is “electable”. Such a person will make sure Social Security, will continue as before, along with deficit spending, and open borders.
Make sure you are extremely embarrassed if you vote for a candidate who isn’t the eventual winner. Fear the judgment of men.
See my tagline for the definition of “front runner” ...
Good post
I tried to opt out of socialist security when I started work 38 years ago. Of course I failed. A few years ago I developed a “present worth” spreadsheet of the opportunity lost because of that ponzi scheme. (I have since lost the file.) I used the actual numbers of what was stolen from me plus my employers’ contribution and a conservative S&P 500-based mutual fund growth over those years. The amount that would be available to me today was huge. Not only would the earnings be several times greater than what I will get from SS, I would be able to pass the balance to my family when I croak. Stinking socialist robbery.
I he could not get his life together because of Social security, I believe he is pretty much a loser. Sorry but Social Secuirty is a small part of the overall tax base. I am one of the few that likes Social Security and happy that people have the opportunity to have it at retirement. They work for it afterall. I hope Social Security lasts forever. It is the only program besides the military I agree with financing.
bttt
He should have thought ahead and went into a field where he could opt out.
Social Security was one big step in the drive to destroy American families.
Old people, the ones with wisdom, get moved to old folks homes where they cannot benefit their families by sharing their wisdom. Their children live on with guilty consciences for abandoning their beloved parents. The grandkids learn to dump responsibility on the government.
Everyone has parents, we should take care of our own without government interference and our children should do the same when our time comes.
Back to indoctrination school for you until you learn to be happy giving your money away like a good socialist!
Carolyn
Wow....did you miss the point, or what??
Militant
“I hate what generations of snakes in elective office have done to the greatest nation and the freest people ever to grace the earth.”
Whatever case we make to the world about our freedom, our draconian tax structure says otherwise.
At some point, I would still have $300,000 to pass on to my kids had I invested it myself. With S.S. it all goes away upon death. This is the best argument I can see for Dubya's original plan for personal accounts.
Try the math yourself.
Since 1983, all new federal employees must pay into SS. Others were offered the opportunity to join the system.
You have to live to collect it. Someone could pay into SS for 50 years, die at age 67, and never collect a dime except for a small burial allowance.
WEll then you're just a jerk. FYI, he's 48 and it isn't over yet. So what is it about government largesse that you embrace so willingly?
President Bush tried to reform SS so it made more sense, but he was savaged by the Dims and betrayed by some Republicans. In my opinion amputation, cutting off SS immediately is the answer. Maybe in the next administration, tho as far as I can tell, none of the Republican candidates is for ending it, tho it would probably be political suicide to admit that was your plan.
Social Security is one thing, and I don’t like it because it’s a bad use of our money, but it’s a whole different problem when the politicians decided to use the money that was CONSFISCATED from us to buy votes for themselves by appeasing special interest groups. It should have been illegal...but they make the rules. So yes, we are slaves...like frogs in boiling water, it just took too long for most of us to figure out.
Gov. retiree here,,paid my SS,and anything else that the Gov. could figure,,,took home 50% of my pay,,make less now,still take home the same,go figure,,and Bob ,, me and the wife got our little 26.5 acres..Quit crying and “Git Er Done”..
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