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Health & Fitness

Thank God For Social Security

The promise of social security and the impact on people a generation ago and today.

It begins pretty early in our lives nowadays. Kids get their social security card/number within one to five years of life. At one point when I was much younger I joked that the reason parents were getting their children a social security card was they were afraid the government would run out of nine digit numbers. Any Math persons want to give the actual permutations of the 9 digits in this set: {0. 1, 2...8.9} ?

Please don’t allow these tentative ventures into math and/or science put any readers off; it is only a passing fancy and gives us vital trivia upon which to discourse more freely about life in the USA vs elsewhere.

The number of permutations of 10 digits to 9 integers (Y-A-W-N) is well... a lot.   Thus, I needn’t have feared that the Social Security numbers would be used up before we all got one. This number, we all know, establishes our work life in America, save those permanent residents who have a green card number.

With this I sauntered off myself into my first job which was as an assistant librarian in Boston, at the Kirstein Business Branch. In my new experience as assistant librarian, I learned that access to the library is free, or at least was free; the City of Boston actually had to spend money to keep them operating. This money came from the taxes paid to the city by the residents who owned land therein, mostly. The property tax came to consciousness as well. I conjectured that there was a willingness by the people who lived in Boston to spend their hard earned tax payment for a main library and many branches thereof.

So, when Dad and Mom went off to work, leaving me and my siblings alone to create all sorts of trouble, part of their earnings went to pay for this tax, along with the mortgage, something unclear called an excise tax for automobiles and sewer and water taxes.

Then I received my first paycheck, a humble amount of money as it was, and noticed there were columns for “state” “fed” “fica” or titles to that effect. Small portions of my hard earned money--and believe me no one has really worked hard until they’ve had to read shelf from one end of the library to the other end making sure that ALL the books were in order based on the Dewey Decimal System--were allocated to these columns.

I wasn’t totally unaware that I would have had income tax withholding. Seeing this horror occurring to my own money really did disturb me. I mean, when you're working and making a gross income of $15.00/wk every penny mattered. So I asked the business manager what the fica was all about, she cheerily informed me that it stood for Federal Insurance Contribution Act. With me remaining standing without returning to my assigned duties, she looked up and elaborated further: “It’s what you pay for your retirement insurance.”

“Oh” I said, and walked away. It is what I pay for my retirement insurance. Well I knew my grandfathers were ‘looking forward to when they could retire” so I knew that at some point I would be too old to work and I would be getting my retirement insurance.

My father’s answer to the question as to where did they keep this money for my retirement insurance was clear: “You contribute money throughout your lifetime and when you are going to retire your money gets paid back to you each month.” “Well,” I replied,”isn’t it just like a bank?” “Oh no, it's insurance, not a bank account.” Most of my childhood my father was an insurance broker. Don’t think that I understood what insurance was. I did know from hearing my father talk about it that you had to have it to be sure if something wrong happened that you’d “be covered.” So, through my payments to Fica which we all know is the Social Security Fund, I would be ‘covered’ for money when I (someday in the far-to-distant-future-to-be-actually-worried-about) would retire.

Well, as my father would often say: “Thank God we live in America.” And dutifully we did go to the local Catholic church to do just that.

So, as it turned out, my maternal grandfather did retire and in fact didn’t collect social security as he had paid into the Rail Road Pension Plan and got his retirement “from the railroad.” This was because my grandfather belonged to a union. Belonging to a union in my childhood was spoken in a hushed voice, meaning this person had entered into a club, not unlike a church. At the union hall there were dinners, and drinking; weddings were held. Everyone seemed connected to one another. Plus, they would always have a job because they couldn’t be fired.

This idea was quite titillating given how many people we saw on national network television who were afraid of losing their job because of the high cost of living and what they were doing or not doing in Washington “to help the little guy.” For a while, I contemplated the idea of joining a union, until I realized that my profession of interest wan’t unionized, but they were very supportive of the unions since the unions had saved the Irish from the horrible troubles insinuated on them by the English. Of course, sometimes life in the old country got mixed up with life here in America. but, as my aunt would whisper “Just look (at the head of businesses) they all have English last names.” Well, that and Jewish names, but the Irish had no problems with the Jews--mostly because the Jews had all moved out of the Irish part of town. Little notice was given that they had not only moved out of South Boston, but they had moved into Newton, where apparently all was fine regardless of how many businesses they owned.

On the other side of the family, my poor, indeed, paternal grandfather did retire on social security having worked in factory jobs and farms in his life here in America. He still had income from the other two apartments of his three story walk-up, which was really so wonderful, because if they hadn’t, well social security wasn’t enough for them to live on.

Well, this led to further questions. “Why isn’t it?” “Well, my grandfather didn’t make that much money so he didn’t contribute as much.” Oh, I thought.  Yet to hear mr father’s father say it--”Thank God we live in America”--it was better than what he would had in the ‘old’ country. So, we all toasted with his homemade wine to a “long life here in America.”
















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