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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (22403)	1/1/2004 5:18:08 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793590

I watched a TV special report on the Social Security system a few years ago where several retired people were describing how they had already received payouts many times in excess of what they had paid into the system. A while back, while I was visiting my father in his retirement community, I conversed with a bunch of SS recipients who were insistent that the checks they were getting were returns on moneys they had "deposited" and were quite offended at my notion that the money was coming from taxes on current workers. So I chatted up a number of others and discovered only a couple who understood how the system worked. That was a real revelation to me. I wonder if the sense of entitlement would be as strong as it is if current recipients understood it better.

To: FaultLine who wrote (22403)	1/1/2004 8:42:23 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793590

* "The first person to collect monthly Social Security benefits was a legal secretary by the name of Ida May Fuller. She paid a total of $24.74 in Social Security taxes and received a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits (numbers not adjusted for inflation). Ms. Fuller started paying taxes at the outset of the Social Security program and retired three years later at the age of 65. She lived to be 100 years old"