I’ve been contemplating what fresh hell I would give my attention to this week in this missive, and Lord knows there’s plenty to choose between.
That crazy chat group with some of the most powerful people in government texting details about upcoming American bombings in Yemen is dumbfounding. As a proud Luddite who is pretty dumb about most things technical, I felt just a wee bit superior just knowing none of them had enough common sense to say, “I think this isn’t the right place to be talking about this stuff.” They made it really hard not to judge them.
Then there’s our new Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, whose perception of reality matches that of a lug nut. He asserted this week that if Social Security payments weren’t made this month, his 94-year-old mother-in-law “wouldn’t call and complain. She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month.” He went on to say, “A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining.” Why do I suspect he’s done his fair share of screaming, yelling and complaining?
The surviving children of the Great Depression and World War II are far more likely to know the value of a dollar than their children, grandchildren and everyone else down the line. My own mother-in-law, the late Dowager Baroness as I always thought of her, was a meticulous keeper of books, having worked in that capacity as a young single lady in San Francisco before her marriage.
After her death just over a year ago, her files and ledgers going back over sixty years surfaced. It reminded me of going through Mother’s house in Tyler after Daddy died, and finding that he had saved every income tax return he ever filed with all supporting documentation, over about 40 years. If Daddy and my mother-in-law were still alive, they would have been on the phone the next day if that Social Security payment wasn’t made on time, and not because they were fraudsters or destitute. Rather, because they were like a whole bunch of people in this country who know what they have coming to them and aren’t going to be cheated out of it without a fight.
From what I’ve seen on social media recently, but going back for several years, Social Security is one of the only issues on which most of us seem to agree. (That, and not turning up our thermostats in the heat of a Texas summer because it’ll put a strain on the power grid.) From left to right, all across the political spectrum, cutting Social Security benefits is the true third rail of American politics that all elected officials should approach with great caution, as it should be. After all, just over a quarter of American adults are currently receiving benefits from Social Security. The rest of those adults who are in the workforce have been paying into the system all of their working lives in anticipation of receiving earned benefits at some future time.
In a conversation on this subject I listened to recently on cable news, I was disheartened to hear the speaker defending Social Security against cuts because so many people need it. While that is true, it seems to me that such an argument diminishes the role that Social Security was designed to play in retirement planning. Payments may be a sole source of income, a primary source or a supplemental source. Regardless of that, it has never been a needs-based benefit and has been funded by our payroll taxes, separate from our income taxes.
When we receive payments from Social Security, no one is giving us jack. These are not some government handouts. They are not “entitlements” in the sense of expected privileges. To receive them is our right under the law because we lived and worked long enough to be eligible for these benefits, either from retirement or disability. We only get what we worked for, what we earned and most importantly, what we have already paid for.
If anyone is brave enough or crazy enough to touch that third rail and try to cut these benefits, a great big chuck of that 25% of the adult population receiving them will likely join the number of Americans who are already upset with what’s been going on for the last couple of months, making for some pretty strange bedfellows.
FAFO indeed.
