Social decay and Social Security...

As much as I hate to say it, and mind I am not trying to push any grandpa's and grandma's off a cliff here. I blame Social Security for the mess of today sure the boom happened when folks no longer had to consider caring for grandma and gramps, but this started a slippery slope that resulted in the social problems of today.

Bear with me here for a minute. Prior to Social Security when the grandparents got to old to work and had to go into retirement where did they go. A good 70% of them would wind up with the most stable of their kids, the other 20% would wind up in group old folks homes with 10% having made a good pension or saved properly to be independant.

What this translated into was Dad would be off working, Mom would be taking care of the house, while the Gramps were teaching the kiddos right and wrong and their values.

When social security hit its golden age the first few generations to start getting it the Gramps no longer had to move in with the kids, they could stay independent longer. This in turn led to More stress on the families, now mom no longer just had to worry about taking care of the house but also had to worry about the kids at the same time.

The kids No longer having the guidance of the elders would then discover things that at first seemed like good ideas like "Free Love" "Feminism (the Bra Burning type)" "Loose Morals" "Unplanned Marriage" "Easy Divorce" The moms were too busy to catch this Revolution that the Grandparents could and would have stopped, but Grandma and Grandpa were living high on the hog in Florida instead of at home with the family.

Over time things got tighter, Mom could no longer afford to stay home and care for the Rebellious kids and take care of the house, due to factors that were out of control dad's earning power was just not keeping up. Here came in the Steno Pools and of course the second wave of Feminist(the good ones??) the working Moms. Now since the Gramps were States away families had to rely on Babysitters, and or Day cares and the school system to take care of their kiddos, resulting in less respect for the parents, and a slow destruction of the Authority of the parents i.e. the HAPPY DAYS... life was no longer the Leave it to Beaver or Make room for daddy type life. Divorce was Just starting to become more common, the dad was spending longer hours at work, and either Mom or Dad would start feeling Lonely and it gives way to Straying from the vows...

This directly Begat the Fatherless Homes... which effected every Race in America some just tried to hide its effect more then others. The kids now had No in house Authority figure raised by the State and the Streets for the most part. Single parent homes majority of the time Single mom homes due to Bias of the Courts. Kids now Run wild, the generation that were raised with out grandma and grandpa's direct guidance were now in charge, The thinking of special snowflake children was starting, the rod was put a way and the brats spoiled even more. The State started stepping in More and More saying what a parent could and could not do... more could not do then not.

Come closer to today the Brats were raised in households where one over stressed parent resided, with the idea of being able to Fornicate and forget, this created more single mom homes and school age pregnancies (which seem to be getting younger and younger every year).

Welcome the Millennials the Brats who had no guidance other then what the State gave, no drive for winners or losers, no failure, no morals from generations past...

All because The Government thought it would be nice to take care of peoples retirements... If someone wanted the source of the Decay of American Society In my Honest Opinion there it is.

The cause of why things have gotten worse, Government trying to fix a simple thing as taking care of a group of people that the care of was the responsibility of their kids.

So how do we fix it, well if social programs were sun set (note not Cold turkey) but drawn down, giving a cut off where there would be no new claims and a second cut off that would release the workers from paying into the system at a different age when the claimants at the first cut off started seriously dying off. This would force a little better family planning and retirement planning which would put the gramps back in the homes, maybe just maybe it would reverse the mess.

After all Presenting a problem with out a possible solution is just spinning wheels, and I prefer to try and go places.

Something to chew on while enjoying a

CoBaZ

a reply to: CoBaZ

A lot of thought and reflection went into your op, and I find myself in agreement with some of your conclusions. The focal point, the erosion of the family unit, lack of role models and teaching responsibility for ones action are the reason for many of the societal problems we face today.

a reply to: CoBaZ

I really wish I had a keyboard in front of me instead of a phone right now, but I don't so I'll have to keep this shorter than I'd like.

First off, while I don't agree with all of your assertions and conclusions, I agree with (what I believe to be) your general train of thought.

If I had to boil all your points to brass tacks, I would say the overriding theme and the root cause of ALL of it.... I'd say that people in modern day America jump on what "feels right" at the moment without taking the time to consider the unintended consequences.

Thanks for a well thought out post.

a reply to: Boscowashisnamo

So true.

We talk about what to do with youthful offenders, single parent households, kids arriving at school hungry and we try to put bandages on the symptoms without ever having thoughtful discussions as to the root cause of the problems.

That is not to say that a traditional nuclear family would never create problems, but I believe it would create far less than we have and see every day.

a reply to: eluryh22

I would venture to say it so much is not the Traditional Nuclear family as long as all the roles are filled properly, even a Non-traditional structure would work as long as the preceding generation was included.

Leaving SSI out of it I agree.
Fortunately we have one grandkid who gets shared by everyone, great grand parents, grandparents and aunts, uncles. Eventually he's going to have some cousins, but at this rate he'll be old enough to baby sit them. I feel bad cause he's surrounded by adults and I worry he doesn't get enough "peer" time.

On the other hand there is a noticeable difference between his behavior and other kids when we're out.
So...
Barring teenage insanity now I worry we're raising the last responsible kiddo on the planet and he's gonna be super pissy when he's "adulting" and finds out the world has no ethics or morals or grammar.

Color me confused.

Erm, that's a little romanticized. The ONLY reason my late grandmother spent 30 years caring for my Alzheimer's-crippled great-grandmother was because it was cheaper to play nurse than having her housed in a facility. That's all. They couldn't afford to put her in a care facility, and it was simply cheaper for her to DIY rather than out of goodness of hearts. Eventually, great-grandma's hidden stash of cash from earlier in her life came to light, and she went to a facility for the remainder of her days.

So yeah, keep in mind it can often just boil down to money & feasibility for caring for elders.The worse off someone is medically, the more of a humongous mental drain it is. That can turn into resentment easily (she was very resentful, yes)

a reply to: CoBaZ

Well conceived OP! To an extent, you've got it correct and I'd agree that Social Security could well be a factor that's contributing to social decay. But what you're focusing on is the breakdown of the extended family living arrangement and there's really probably no reversing that, with or without SS. Societal decay is a multi-faceted problem for which there's probably no cure. Once manners, ethics and sense and transmission of a moral code is abandoned, there's no going back and a big part of the reason is success and wealth itself. In the final analysis, the truth is that in so many so-called family units in the US, no one wants to take care of the kids and the last thing anyone wants is gramps or grandma hanging around.

Consider this:

The Social Security Act was signed into law by President Roosevelt on August 14, 1935.

The Great Depression started with the stock market crash in 1929 and people's savings were wiped out. By 1933, around 14 million people were unemployed and about half the banks were dead, along with the people's savings accounts. It took World War 2 to get our economy kickstarted again. And well, you really can't expect expect the unemployed son's to go to war AND remain home to watch over granny and grandpa, can you? My father was raised during the depression, fought in World War Two. He was raised by a single mother, who also cared for her mother in their home. After my grandmother's death, we found that she had a rather odd habit (or maybe her mother did, probably both really. They all quilted, and sold the quilts them made (even my father worked sewing quilts as a child), so there was an awful lot of pieces of fabric on the old house. In the sewing room, in the upstairs bedrooms, and in the attic. They were all carefully rolled and tied and placed old trunks, dresser drawers, whatever. And, well, after my grandmothers death, it was discovered that some of these old rolled up pieces of cloth has money, gemstones, old coins, whatever hidden within them, but mostly money! I kind of think that many who went through the depression never did actually fully trust the banks, or the stock maarket, or much of anything else after that.

If you compare the fact of the pre-depression economy with that of the pre-housing bust they are really quite similar, especially the over-speculation. And well the results of those two crashes have been pretty similar. And, I would guess that it will probably take another war to the scale of WWII to get the world out of it's economy downward spiral. Believe me when I tell you, I have three sons, and together combining their resources they are in no position to take care of an elderly parent!

You can blame social security for all the country's ills but I have to tell you, we lived over a 100 miles from my grandmother, and she had a great influence on my life. She was the well of family history, Her whole home was a monument to the past. How many one this thread can actually say that they held and read the actual news page announcing the assassination of lincoln? I found he story on the other side of that page just as interesting even if it consisted of two paragraphs, never was taught in school that they would public whip interracial couples consisting of a white and a native american...

Now that I am older, with children of my own, I wish that I could have saved that old house, with all it's contents for my children and grandchildren. But I am pretty sure that even if I could have come up with the funds then to do the work needed to fix the place up, all those periodic economic downturns that have occurred since then would have defeated the purpose anyways.

And, well you can't have it both ways, can you? you can't have the kids and grandkids staying close to grandma, and tell the to follow the jobs wherever they might take them. Those economic downturns have probably played a more central role to the demise of the influence of the extended family than social security has.

And, by the way, my grandmother and her mother supported themselves, there was no daddy heading to work everyday bringing home the bacon.. they did! my mother also worked for most of my childhood, so didn't my dad, they had to to make ends meet. If you browse through the company photos of long ago, you will find that there were many women working outside of the home, because they had to! It was only the upper middle class and the rich who could really afford to have mom home and live comfortably. My sister took care of her mother-in-law after she came down with Alzheimer's for years, she says if she had it to do over again, she wouldn't. My brother is now taking care of our aunt with the same problem, he doesn't sound too happy either. Of course, he's also got a few of his adult kids, along with their kids living with him also, the result of a dying economy...
but continue on if you like griping about social security. I am sure you kids will just love getting stuck with the bill in your last days, and all those non-profits and such that take advantage of the seniors who just love to volunteer won't mind having to hire someone to replace them when they can no longer donate that little bit of time because they are having to work multiple low wage jobs just to keep a roof over their head and food on the table because you kids are barely making it yourselves or are just too tied up living your own lives to worry about them.

a reply to: CoBaZ

There is a lot of truth there even if I don't agree with all of it, but the heart of it is the erosion of the concept of family ties both immediate and extended and the strength it lends us as individuals and what the does for a society as a whole. Family, immediate and extended, is one of the support networks that helps us live as free people.

The other two are faith groups and neighborhoods.

Look around you and see how those two are being eroded and attacked too.