The United States was going through the Great Depression, with much hardship, when Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933. He immediately began instituting his “New Deal,” with a subservient Congress ready to approve.
One of the government programs began the biggest single social expenditure in America. It is Social Security, enacted by Congress and signed into law by Roosevelt in 1935.
Over three-quarters of a century later, Social Security has become the main financial retirement program for millions of people, with “old age” and “disability” benefit checks in the mail each month.
The program is financed by payroll taxes deducted from employers and employees.
Not only has money from the Social Security “trust fund” been spent for other government programs, being replaced only by IOUs, but the long-term promised payments will eventually exceed the prospective money coming in.
Sound financing has been put off. Not many people want to think about what will happen when the money runs out. Social Security is such an important political pension program that politicians don’t like to talk about its problems.
With so many people dependent upon Social Security, many older Americans prefer to assume “the money will be there” for them. But reality cannot be ignored forever. What about future generations as they become eligible for Social Security benefits?
Wouldn’t it be wise – though painful -for us to consider the inevitable reality before the day comes when there is too little money in the fund to make Social Security checks good?