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Social Security: You pay in, but politicians don’t want to pay out

By Staff | Mar 16, 2023

To the editor:

The French have been marching to preserve the French version of Social Security for a month now. The attacks on seniors’ to rob their savings accounts and prevent them collecting on their own contributions seems to be universal. The French are being asked to wait until they are older to collect their pension. In the U.S., the plan seems to be to subsidize 401k plans controlled by employers as a disincentive to Social Security contribution. The U.S. Congress, has authorized giving the pentagon $45 billion MORE than they asked for this year in the defense budget. If we have such excess that we can spend $797 billion on military appropriations, it should be laughable to argue that other agencies tighten their fiscal belt, or that the elderly be robbed. The Social Security administration can and should be allowed to distribute to seniors the funds the seniors themselves set aside in their paychecks all these years.

Allowing the Medicare plan to negotiate medication prices, such as insulin, can save a ton of money. Eli Lilly is to be congratulated on lowering their prices to everyone to match the 300% profit they accepted for insulin and are mandated to accept from Medicare.

But Americans should be allowed to retire with dignity in this country, and receive the pension funds that they paid for. Of course the Reagan administration robbed funds from Social Security to pay for illegal wars in Central America. Those Social Security accounts should be made whole out of Pentagon largess. Maybe the Pentagon should budget restoring those accounts.

The legislators that seem so vicious to the elderly, are oddly reluctant to appear less than blood thirsty in Pentagon spendings.

Ellen Starbird

Cape Coral