<snip> I was almost 40 when my parents retired and I began to realize how Social Security actually works -- that my payroll deductions helped pay for the Social Security checks my mom and dad received each month.
From that point on, until their deaths, I looked at my Social Security deductions with considerable pride -- feeling that I was, in a tangible way, helping to take care of my parents in much the same way that now one of my daughters (and the other when she finishes school and gets a job) contributes, through payroll deductions, to the Social Security checks I now receive.
My maternal grandmother, who worked her entire life as a domestic, lived with our family until her death. That was the way our society took care of its aged before Social Security. In my family's case, during the Depression, it meant a divided household for a number of months -- my grandmother, mom and I living in a rented room while my father slept on the sofa in his older brother's home. It was the only financial arrangement my dad could afford.
For most Americans, such experiences are now part of the past, thanks to a system put in place in the early years of the New Deal. It has served the nation and its citizens well for almost 70 years. But now comes a president with a penchant for lying to the American public who tells us this system is on the verge of bankruptcy. He proposes that citizens invest in the stock market as an alternative way to save for their retirement. <snip>
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/213474_locke25.html
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