Why Social Security is Welfare by Robert J. Samuelson
Posted by Pete | Posted in News | Posted on 08-03-2011
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In today’s Albuquerque Journal, March 7, 2011 there is an article by Robert J. Samuelson…No doubt he is a rich, well rewarded writer of the Washington Post, Newsweek and probably author of many best selling books, so he is well versed to talk about us folks that worked all of our adult life, most of the time for companies that did not have a retirement plan…So, we paid into our only option, Social Security….and paid and paid and paid….Now we are trying to collect some of that money. I have been retired a few years and I don’t think I have come close to drawing out what I paid in, yet, althoughI am not sure now just how much I did pay in total….. Mr. Samuelson says all of us drawing social security are welfare recipients, saying it taxes one group to pay another group. I never felt like I was donating to Social Security Recipients while I was working. Now that I am on the receiving end I just feel like I am collecting what I paid into for all the years….And until the idiot today called me a welfare recipient, I felt very happy,…well, I don”t want to use that term, idiot, I know that’s not right nor proper, so scratch that part….until that rich person today called us welfare recipients, I felt very happy…even knowing that one day there will be an end to the money available….but everyone one of us that paid all those years, Mr. Samuelson, we want our money….it was honest labor on our part and it was not optional…Shame on you for calling us welfare cases….Pete Hester
The tragedy is you are both correct. Social Security recipients are the benefactors of a type of welfare to which they have contributed all their working life. The employee contributes, but the employer and the government contributes more. Social Security is probably the best type of social welfare. It is certainly not an insurance policy because the benefits are quaranteed by the government and not by personal and private deposits. So, what else can it be but a type of social welfare to which the benefactor has contributed throughout his or her working life. You are both correct. I hope to work and contribute into the system until I am about 90, then draw a little out (if the system and our government survives), until I am about 100+. In order to make the writer of this blog happy as well as millions of other SS recipients now and in the future, I will not call it public welfare, which is what it essentially is; but I chose to call it a reward from the younger generations to the older generations for a generous life of service. Reward is a better description of it than welfare, which it is, or a return of money earned, which it definitely is not.
I suppose that I am one of your class of idiots because I, along with Mr. Samuelson, is calling all social security recipients the recipients of government sponsored social welfare but with an important qualification. It is a reward for an important lifetime of service. It is not a dollar-for-dollar return of earnings (as is an insurance policy), but it is simply a reward for a lifetime of service to which the recipient has contributed both by direct contributions into the fund as well as in the payment of taxes which is the source of most of the funding for the entire system. The Social Security tax, which we all have paid all of our working lives, is essentially just another tax that we all have had to pay. Remember reward! Forget welfare! The term “welfare” is like Obama’s “war on terrorism”: an accurate description but an unmentiontionable term in polite and official conversation.
Yes sir, I would have to place you in the same class as Mr. Samuelson…I am not a welfare recipient….I paid to enjoy these benifits. Nothing you can or will say will change me. Sorry ’bout that. Some of us have to have that money. Others don’t….Its not welfare….
Thanks for placing me in the same class with the imminent Mr, Samuelson. In much earlier times, I would have been gratified being placed in the same class as that of an imminent writer in The Washington Post and Newsweek, but these today are far out liberal, yankee media outlets. We must, however, look at the facts. Social Security is a form of public welfare where the recipient contributes in a small way to his own benefits, but it is best considered as a reward for a job well done, not a refund of past contributions or a direct dollar for dollar payment as if it were an insurance policy. It is, after all, just another government tax on the people which is subject to being used by the Congress for just about anything that they want to spend it on. Most of it is spent for the payment of one war after another ad infinitum. Don’t worry! The current republican budget cutting and balancing act is not going to involve entitlements, except perhaps in the public sector which is lorded over by public sector unions for the benefit of do-nothing, lazy public sector employees at the expense of the taxpayer. If you were not a unionized, public sector employee and having lived in a nice right to work state, like Arkansas, Alabama, or New Mexico, you have nothing to worry about.