When people say government programs don't work, this is the one I think of first: a program that has worked almost seamlessly for seventy some years. Any shortfall in their accounts has come because money had been borrowed from it to meet other needs.
Millions of people have had decent old ages because of this FDR initiative. My parents, poorish all their lives, felt more security after sixty-five than at any time before it.
A lot of legislators would like to see it go because they aren't so interested in people that need help at the end of life. Or people who need any government programs during their lives. They truly believe if you can't take care of yourself, too bad. Or they think, why not allow private insurers to take this on.
Can you imagine how a program such as Social Security would be run in private hands? Has your insurance agent ever called you up to explain that you were paying too much? I bet not. Has you health care provider ever sent you a note saying you should get that surgery your doctor mentioned?
But a woman called us a few weeks ago and spent twenty minutes explaining that we were not getting the best deal from Social Security the way we set it up. A few months ago, they sent me a check, telling me they had underpaid me (my mistake) for the first nine months I collected. They seem determined we should get the most we have coming. A private insurer would never do this because our money would be coming out of the company pocket. A conflict of interest exists whenever a private company services the public.
There are many people in government who do have your best interests at heart. I can't imagine any corporation that does. Not any private healthcare system, not any agribusiness, not any car company. Anything they do to help you is because your government makes them. Or to compete with a company that does. It's the government who made them install seatbelts, makes them stop polluting water, makes them insure people with pre-existing conditions, makes them stop allowing people to smoke in restaurants, makes them do the right thing.
I don't want to debate this here, I swore I was off of that carousel, but I do want to credit SS with being a well run program that may soon need our help to survive.
