90 years ago today, on August 14, 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression, the poorly-conceived and undeniably socialistic Social Security Act was signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). The first Social Security numbers were issued in 1936, and the first Social Security taxes were collected in January, 1937. The first benefits were doled out in 1940. The following is from the SSA website:
“On January 31, 1940, the first monthly retirement check was issued to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, in the amount of $22.54. Miss Fuller, a Legal Secretary, had retired in November 1939. She started collecting benefits in January 1940 at age 65 and lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975.
Ida May Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.”
That first beneficiary’s experience illustrates the folly of the whole scheme. The deeply entrenched (and mandatory enrollment for nearly all working people) Social Security program is essentially a Ponzi Scheme. It depends on the assured demographics of a continuously growing working-age population. That ended with the Baby Boom, and the Baby Boomers are now retiring. If the current SSA empire is not superseded by a genuine investment program that the congresscritters cannot touch with their greedy fingers, then my children and grandchildren will probably never recoup more than a tiny fraction of their “contributions.” – JWR
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And on August 14, 1864, gold was discovered in Helena, Montana.
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Today’s feature article is a brief review that is too short to be an entry for our writing contest.
We need more entries for Round 120 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. More than $960,000 worth of prizes have been awarded since we started running this contest. Round 120 ends on September 40th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging. In 2023, we polled blog readers, asking for suggested article topics. Please refer to that poll if you haven’t yet chosen an article topic.
Read the full article here