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Categories - Copywriting - Shopping - Free Online Business Help - Telecommunications Services Articles: Family - Your Social Security Then as now, after much argument about whether it would be good thing or would, in the end, cost more jobs in an economy that was struggling to recover from the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program in 1935 as part of the New Deal. The initial act did not apply to all people or job categories equally and, when the Supreme Court began to question the constitutionality of the bill, FDR proposed legislation that would allow him to add and appoint more judges to federal courts including the Supreme Court. The 51 new judges that he proposed would tip the judicial branch in his favor if they were put into office. FDR promised that participation in the Program would be completely voluntary, and that participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program. The tax is now 7.65% of everything up to $102,000 and must be matched with employer-contributed funds. Since companies add the cost of taxes and fees to the prices of the products that they manufacture, this is now over a 16% tax burden placed on the economy. FDR also promise that the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year, but the tax is no longer tax deductible adding to the actual burden that the population and the economy are expected to bear. FDR also said that annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income. Under Clinton, that was changed so that up to 85% of your Social Security income can now be taxed. Al Gore cast the deciding vote in the Senate to allow the change to go through. Even though the original intent was to keep the elderly from slipping into poverty when they retired, current social security benefits are well below poverty level. FDR specified that the money collected would be put into the independent Trust Fund rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program and no other Government program. Under Johnson, who was looking for ways to finance his war in Viet Nam, the money was moved to the General Fund and spent on other federal programs. In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled that no one has a contractual right to the Social Security funds that they have paid in under the program while, at the same time, Congress has added to the number and classifications of people who may receive benefits. Under the Carter administration, the federal government began issuing Social Security payments to immigrants who had never paid a dime into the program. At the same time, slow economic growth with high unemployment and double digit inflation, called stagflation, caused the actual value of social security payments to decline and nothing was done to alleviate the pressure on the elderly who saw their meager standard of living rapidly evaporating. During these economic trying times, Carter increased Social Security withholding from 3% to 6.15% while guaranteeing that the increase would insure the viability of a program that was already in trouble through 2030. Several thousand employees of Galveston County, Texas were allowed to opt out of the Social Security program in the early 1980s, and have their money placed in a private retirement plan instead. While employees who earned $50,000 per year would have collected $1,302 per month in Social Security benefits, the private plan paid them $6,843 per month. While employees who earned $20,000 per year would have collected $775 per month in Social Security benefits, the private plan paid them $2,740 per month, at interest rates prevailing in 1996. While millions of Americans now depend on Social Security and the stated intent of the original Social Security program sounded good, a population that was suffering as a result of financial malfeasance during the Great Depression was simply taken advantage of and continues to be taken advantage of today. Congress is quick to tell the population that the Social Security system is broken, but they are not quick to tell anyone or even admit as to who was/is the culprit. As with most social programs under our socialized form of government, social security is simply being used to get politicians elected. While we can’t, in good conscience, simply cut the people off who survive on Social Security, we have to realize that this was simply a trap devised to put us in a position where we would be more dependent on and under the control of the federal government. We were preyed upon when we were at our weakest and we have to figure a way out of this socialist quagmire that is draining the nation of prosperity and freedom at the rate of $650 billion per year.
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