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Show The Short End The basic difficulty, inherent in any socialized welfare wel-fare service, is that once the system takes root, the administrative ad-ministrative overhead becomes so extensive and expensive expen-sive that the public necessarily gets the short end of the stick. This is a basic truism that deserves more public understanding un-derstanding on the part of every citizens of these United States. A belief that our federal government in many cases jlives us something for nothing is another basic misunderstanding misun-derstanding that, no matter how often preached, is even less often understood and believed. A case in point is the Social Security System. It was established in 1937 on the theory that it would provide benefits superior to those available under private plans. This is not true. However, it is true that through administrative admin-istrative power social security is forced on the working man of the United States, whereas private plans are not mandatory and therefore in many cases not consistant. Consider the case of the worker today who at 21 begins be-gins paying his Social Security taxes. By the time he is 65, he will have contributed, between his own and his employers' em-ployers' payments, over $18,000. If that same money was banked at 4V-f interest compounded com-pounded quarterly, it would accumulate about $50,000 at retirement age. This money continued at Wirc would bring in an income of about $2,125 yearly. On the other hand, SS provides only $1,524. It can be added that SS terminates ter-minates on death, save for very small benefits to widows. No cash reserve is built up. |