From: utzoo!dciem!mmt Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Re: S.S. Article-I.D.: dciem.163 Posted: Sat Jan 29 13:06:22 1983 Received: Sat Jan 29 13:26:54 1983 References: watarts.1644 I can't understand these people who claim the Social Security system is now or must soon break down. They seem to think that a dollar now invested means a dollar later returned. They forget that money is just a way of lubricating the exchange of goods and services. Some people work and make things that other people want. The social question is how to distribute these things. If people between 20 and 70 work and make things, then they have to find ways of getting those things to people younger than 20 and older than 70. If the working force is smaller, then a higher proportion of "their" money must be used to try to get things to those who don't work. This interacts with the "micro-processor revolution" which makes it easier for fewer people to make more things, just as increases in farm productivity made it possible for fewer people to feed the rest of us. There's no way around the fact that productive people have to dispose of their product to unproductive people. All the rest of the argument hinges around your moral and ethical approach to the world. If you really believe "I am the world; no-one owes me anything and I owe nothing to anybody", then go to it. Don't accept electricity from the power station, or food from a farmer, or love from a parent or child. If you look at our world now, there are very few productive people. How productive is a stockbroker, a waiter, an entertainer, or a shopkeeper? Only a few farmers and a lot of assembly-line workers are really productive, and the latter group are worried they may lose their jobs as did the farmers earlier this century. What do other people do? They serve each other and the productive workers, each in their own way. So do old people, if you let them. They provide wisdom and experience, and their love of the world. Isn't that worth paying for? Please stop claiming that the Social Security system must break down because you are now paying into it a few dollars that someone else is taking out. Martin Taylor