Our Social

Security Administration apparently has hired a public

relations consultant.

Have you

gotten your Social Security "statement" in the

mail?

Got mine

the other day, and it's an incredibly feeble attempt at

improving the program's image. If the folks in charge at

the SSA think I'm going to be pleased to find out that if

I work until I'm 70 - after paying 15 percent of my

income for 52 years - I can receive about one-third

of what I'm making right now, I begin to understand why

the program is in trouble.

Twenty

years from now I'll be living on a third of what I'm

making now. I'm supposed to be happy about that? I've

read that if I live long enough I'll probably get back

all that I've paid in plus about 2 percent.

The last

time anybody did me that big of a favor was when I took

that "free" vacation and bought that lot in

Florida.

Of course,

I was never so stupid as to think that Social Security

would provide all I need for retirement. I'm doing my

best to invest on my own.

But it's

tough to come up with much to invest when the government

is already taking 15 percent for Social Security (with

such a tiny expected return), plus the accumulated effect

of all the other taxes - about half of what I make.

I like the

twisted logic behind listing my contributions thus far as

two separate numbers: "you paid" and "your

employers paid." The subtle suggestion that the

government is doing me a favor by forcing my employers to

match my Social Security "contribution" is

ludicrous.

There are

two ways the SSA can collect the money: one is for my

employer to put all the money into my salary and then

show it as 15 percent withheld; the other is to put half

into my salary and pay the other half directly. The

second way conveniently hides half of the transaction

from the ignorant employee so that most people will

actually argue that they pay only a little over 7 percent

of their incomes to Social Security.

Bottom

line, the money that I've paid into Social Security over

the last 30 years could have been built into a sizeable

nest egg of several hundred thousand dollars if it had

been invested, or even just put into a savings account.

Even now,

if I could start putting 15 percent of my income into

mutual funds (in addition to what I'm already investing),

and keep doing so for the next 20 years, I could then put

that nest egg into income-producing investments and get a

lot better return than a third of my year 2000 income.

But SSA

lists my contributions with no interest and lists what I

will receive when I retire as if to say, "See? Look

how little you've paid and how much you'll receive."

Balderdash!

Nonsense! Highway robbery!

And yet,

even so-called conservatives in the government are not

working to do away with this Dickinsian system. Instead

they want to "strengthen" it, or

"save" it. They're even talking about using

general tax funds for Social Security.

That's

right. Social Security has always been funded through the

15 percent contribution, not general income taxes. But

when you hear Al Gore this election season insisting that

we use the budget surplus to "save" Social

Security, that's exactly what he's talking about, using

your income tax money to supplement the program.

In other

words, they'll simply be picking a different pocket,

robbing Peter to pay Paul.

And those

few who, albeit timidly, dare to suggest that maybe

people should be allowed to invest at least some of their own money are

derided by the press and lambasted by liberals, who like

to frighten old people by saying that conservatives want

to put their piddling little Social Security payments

"at risk."

Newt

Gingrich once suggested phasing out Social Security and

the Democrats beat him bloody with mischaracterizations

and outright lies designed to scare people currently

receiving benefits into thinking those benefits were

going to be taken away.

You can't

help but admire them. Dictators in other countries have

brutishly and rather clumsily seized power and have

brazenly used violence to stamp out any semblance of

freedom, and usually are violently replaced by new

dictators. Dictators in this country have managed to

stamp out people's freedom to spend their own incomes,

and to get those same people to thank them (and pay them

handsomely) for doing it.

Only in

America.