Social Security-My Parent's Experience

a reply to: MystikMushroom

I agree. Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes. All of us have over estimated our abilities at one time or another.

a reply to: Metallicus

They do operate with impunity. That's the issue. The Feds are typically charged with oversight of everyone else, well who's been charged with monitoring them? Our government operates with very little oversight or accountability. Who watches the watchers?

You don't say what this "mix-up" was thus making it difficult to assess the situation. But reading between the lines I'm guessing it was because your father was working and collecting social security at the same time and that he started collecting social security before he was age 66. You can start to get it at age 62 at a reduced rate. Until you reach age 66 social security deducts first a dollar for every two dollars beyond a certain limit you earn. As you get older this is reduced to a dollar for every three dollars you earn until you reach 66 when they stop deducting no matter how much you earn. Now, the thing about this reduction is that it gets added back in to you social security later so in effect you get it back. If your father's earning did not get reported in a timely fashion this would account for the problem you relate.

If you start collecting social security early you get a reduced rate from then on. I believe it is about 20%, BUT you collect benefits during that time, from age 62 to 66. If you do the math on it the break-even point is at age 78, not taking into account the NPV (net present value) of money received, i.e.: Money received earlier is more valuable than money received later because of inflation. So after age 78 you are "losing" money compared to if you had waited until age 66 to begin collecting. But age 78 just happens to be the average lifespan, and the money you "lose" from 78 into your eighties is small. If you happen to live to 100 then yeah, you lose some serious money.

So yeah, someone may have screwed up, but it was likely his employer who caused it in the first place.

a reply to: schuyler

I didn't give more details bc it's not especially relevant. While it's true he did start collecting before full retirement age, the mistake was made by SSA when entering the information he provided, not the information provided. They also entered my mothers information incorrectly, indicating her wages were higher than what was reported. The point of the thread is that he's already been receiving benefits from SSA without any problems until this month. Now their mistakes will result in a missed payment for November. And all their attempts to fix the problem has resulted in nothing to being done to fix it for them.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
a reply to: Metallicus

And are you OK watching other people die in the streets of starvation and poverty because of their own choices? Can you look dying people in their eyes and say, "its your own fault, to bad"?

Let's face it: most people aren't capable of taking care of themselves without someone showing them how, or helping them. These folks still make valuable contributions to society by working the jobs they do, consuming the products they do -- ect.

That's hyperbole and you know it is BS. The fact is you want to enslave me to what you see as a benevolent Government. Why are you so against letting people be free? It pisses me off that people like you feel they have the right to get in my business. All I have ever wanted is freedom and for some reason people like you think I don't have a right to be free. I don't care what you want to do with your life why is it so important for you to control my life? It's evil and wrong to force other people to do things against their will...even if you feel like you are being benevolent.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
People love to complain that when the government does something, it does it horribly.

People love to complain that when big business and corporations do something, they trample the little guy and throw the individual under the bus in the pursuit of profit.

People are never happy with any system, and no system is ever perfect.

As long as a system isn't being run the way an individual imagines it should and ought to be -- they won't be happy with it. It's the old "the world according to me" syndrome.

While true, that isn't the issue here. You could very well go to Berlin in 1943 and tell those upset with the current system that people always complain and they should shut up. You'd still be right, that people always complain, but your correctness doesn't invalidate the issues of the people complaining. Then or now.

Part of the problem is that government and business are the only ones allowed to "do something" and most of us just have to sit by and deal with whatever they do. The situation doesn't exist where a normal person wanted to build their home and in the process destroyed a business. The opposite happens all the time, where a business wants to move in and is applauded as they destroy livelihoods and people's homes.

The power of the citizen in the US, in over 200 years, has never been as weak as it is today. That is a hard fact, we are loosing all of our power and those of us not content with being livestock are going to keep complaining.

Livestock are provided for quite well too, free room, free medical care, free food, but there is a price. There is always a price. You may not get butchered and eaten literally, but figuratively that is exactly what those in power have been doing, and seek to do to all those below them.

a reply to: Metallicus

Okay, well go ahead and be "free" and see how that works out. I predict we'd have rampant poverty, rampant death, disease and a rise in crime if everyone just "did what they wanted".

What's the point of people living together in a country, if not to provide a better quality of life for all those in it?

You sound like you would approve of anarchy?

You were born into a country that has specific, pre-existing social contracts. If you do not like the social contract in this country, you are free to move someplace else. There aren't many laws in Somalia I hear, you can pretty much do whatever you want there I've been told.

Any time two or more people interact and choose not to harm one another a social contract is made. The society you were born into has established laws and infrastructure that makes it possible for you to make money, buy food, purchase a computer and get onto the internet -- do you not feel that there is some moral and ethical obligation to contribute back to this society?

I would argue that that those who do not want to contribute back to the society that enabled them are the true "moochers" -- People that horde money and refuse to pay taxes, utilizing the economic system to amass wealth, relying on the nation's reputation for free travel to friendly countries, these are the people getting a free ride off the backs of those contributing to the social contract -- not the low-wage earner on SNAP.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

I am not saying that I would 'do whatever I wanted', but I am saying you don't get to tell me what to do and neither does this society. I am happy to interact and help others on a voluntary basis. I also have no intention of violating natural law by committing crimes against person or property.

There literally aren't any free countries on Earth. We sure need one. Probably living in Alaska is the closest we can get to a lifestyle I would enjoy. If I didn't have family I would have moved there a long time ago.

a reply to: Metallicus

oh, so you admit, your family infringes on your freedom?? gee imagine that. it seems like you have traded some of your freedom for something you value more.....the love and companionship of a family!! so why don't you just drag your family up to alaska with you? could it be that you've traded more of that freedom away for the safety and security that is obtained by living in a less wild wilderness or maybe even in a city when you can enjoy a night on the town once in awhile and the safety that city police can provide you? you have a choice as to how much freedom you wish to give up as well as the tradeoffs that are involved. if you live in the city, you will have far less freedom than you would in a more rural area, but you will also have many more conveniences not enjoyed by those who live in the more rural surroundings. and well, if you want even more freedom, this guy proves it can be done!!!

On May 5, 1998, he became the 454th fugitive listed by the FBI on the Ten Most Wanted list. The FBI considered him to be armed and extremely dangerous, and offered a $1 million reward for information leading directly to his arrest. He spent more than five years in the Appalachian wilderness as a fugitive, during which federal and amateur search teams scoured the area without success.

The Anti-Defamation League noted that "extremist chatter on the Internet has praised Rudolph as 'a hero' and some followers of hate groups are calling for further acts of violence to be modeled after the bombings he is accused of committing."[9]

Rudolph's family supported him and believed he was innocent of all charges,[10] but found themselves under intense questioning and surveillance.[11] On March 7, 1998, Rudolph's older brother, Daniel, videotaped himself cutting off his left hand with a radial arm saw in order to, in his words, "send a message to the FBI and the media."[12] The hand was successfully reattached.[13] According to Rudolph's own writings, he survived during his years as a fugitive by camping in the woods, gathering acorns and salamanders, pilfering vegetables from gardens, stealing grain from a grain silo, and raiding dumpsters in a nearby town.[14][15]

en.wikipedia.org...

if this guy could hide from the FBI for five years, I am pretty sure that anyone could get lost in the forests and stay lost as long as they wanted. not many though are willing to trade all the comforts of society for so much freedom! They're willing to give some of it up, just like you are for the convenience of knowing that your family is safe and secure, they there will be a doctor and fully equipped hospital nearby if needed, ect.

a reply to: Metallicus

Well, we have plenty of room up here If you qualify as a resident the state has good deals on chunks of land for sale.

Question n for you, now that the government has stolen the money out of the ssi trust fund, and yes they stole it, when they can no longer borrow money the pay the people who have worked and paid in to the system, do you think it is going to be easier to swollow "pops, we stole you money so you have to die poor and hungry"? Sure some people would have blew there money instead of saving, but people managed BEFORE ssi. a reply to: dawnstar

Why didn't we have all this "rampant poverty, rampant death, disease, and crime BEFORE ssi? And BEFORE big government and welfare? For well over 100 years things worked pretty well, then the government began to "train" people to be dependent on ssi, welfare, and micro policing. Why save when the government will do it for you? Why work when the government will support you? Why protect your neighbors when the government will do it? Think how much smaller the welfare state would be if we had never put a tag on a hairdryer saying don't use in the tub or shower? I am tired of feeding all the idiots the government has trained and the ones that have been saved by the tag on the hairdryer. There is a deep end of the gene pool for a reason.... If you don't let the dumb one drown, then you are stuck feeding them.
a reply to: MystikMushroom

a reply to: Stearman65

The mindset before was that your kids would take care of you. Other than that that, it was a bleak existence.
www.wsj.com...

For instance, if your parents live to be old enough to have dementia, will you put them in a home or your home?

a reply to: Stearman65

If everything was great and hunky-dory -- why was it created? (social security)

Well, it appears life wasn't all that great after the great depression and Americans were really hurting.

The Social Security Act of 1934 was created during Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term by the President's Committee on Economic Security, under Frances Perkins, and passed by Congress as part of the Second New Deal. The act was an attempt to limit what was seen as dangers in the modern American life, including old age, poverty, unemployment, and the burdens on widows and fatherless children. By signing this act on August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt became the first president to advocate federal assistance for the elderly.

Wikipedia

Liberty is oftentimes a term used interchangeable with "freedom". John Loke had this to say about liberty:

In the state of nature, liberty consists of being free from any superior power on Earth. People are not under the will or lawmaking authority of others but have only the law of nature for their rule. In political society, liberty consists of being under no other lawmaking power except that established by consent in the commonwealth. People are free from the dominion of any will or legal restraint apart from that enacted by their own constituted lawmaking power according to the trust put in it.

Wikipedia

So, the majority of people on Social Security would rather have it than not have it. You seem to be in the minority. According to Loke, we submit to being under lawmaking control by consent -- and the majority consent to having SS taken from their paycheck, and to receive SS when they retire.

a reply to: Cosmic911

My folks are headed to the Utica office. Hopefully they get some good news.

a reply to: Stearman65

ya, live was so grand back then....

Between the 1820s and the late nineteenth century there was a huge growth in the number of poorhouses in America. Some were small, even homey, and held ten or twelve people with a superintendent and a matron, usually his unpaid wife. Large cities and some states had more notorious concrete block institutions which held thousands. Among the most notorious was the Tewksbury Almshouse in Massachusetts, near the large industrial center of Lowell. Bellevue Almshouse in New York City, now Bellevue Hospital, and Cook County Almshouse in Chicago, later Cook County Hospital, were other examples of large poorhouses. Over time, who entered the almshouse changed. For most of the nineteenth century, unemployed men came in and out of the poorhouses, and a large permanent population of people, including the aged, mentally and physically disabled, constituted the bulk of the “inmates.” Reformers made efforts to remove from the poorhouses the mentally ill (an objective of the famous Dorothea Dix), children, the “feeble minded” (developmentally disabled) and “fallen women” (woman perceived as immoral or prostitutes). As these reforms gained momentum, most people who had no choice but to stay in poorhouses were elderly. By the 1880s, the fear of the poorhouse as being the place to die had so permeated the American culture that a ballad “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse” by Will Carleton became a major musical hit. It went in part,


Over the hill to the poor-house I’m trudgin’ my weary way—
I a woman of 70 and only a trifle gray—
I, who am smart an’ chipper, for all the years I’ve told,
As many another woman that’s only half as old. . .
What is the use of heapin’ on me a pauper’s shame?
Am I lazy or crazy? Am I blind or lame?
True, I am not so supple, nor yet so awful stout:
But charity ain’t no favor, If one can live without
Over the hill to the poorhouse—my child’rn dear, goodbye!
Many a night I’ve watched you when only God was nigh:
And God’ll judge between us; but I will always pray
That you shall never suffer the half I do today. (Carleton, 1882)

www.disabilitymuseum.org...