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It may be time to retire the concept of retirement Date published: 7/23/2010
AMONG the many things that the present generation accepts as an age-old tradition is retirement. In reality, retirement is a relatively new phenomenon. I was talking to a man a few weeks ago who made the following statement: "They talk about being the first in your family to graduate from high school or college. Well, I'm the first person in my family who ever retired," he said. I hadn't given it much thought, but the man had a point. If you look back before 1960, you won't find many people who actually retired. They may have gotten too old or sick to work, but to just up and retire, well, unless you were one of a privileged few who had a government job or was president of a bank, you just worked until you couldn't work anymore. There were two factors that made retirement in America possible and they are both institutions that Republicans continually scream and curse about--unions and Social Security. Social Security, enacted as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, gave the lower-income working man something to look forward to when he was no longer able to work. And unions pushed big manufacturing companies to provide for their workers when they got old. Union pensions generally used the Social Security retirement age of 65 as the point where they kicked in. With union jobs and Social Security paving the way, other businesses--public and private--began to look at pensions and retirement. Today many see retirement as an entitlement. But is it? "I've worked at that place for 40 years," a guy recently told me. "Don't you think I am entitled to retire?" "No!" I replied. He was shocked at my answer and acted as if I had insulted him. "Where does it say that a person is entitled to retire?" I asked. "It says nothing about retirement in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. And retirement is not mentioned in the Bible. So where is it written that a person is entitled to retire after working so many years?" The man, of course, had no answer. It's true. No person is entitled to retire any more than a 12-year-old is entitled to a cell phone with unlimited minutes.
"entitled" to retire and that all must provide funds for their old age independant of anyone else, including gov. So...give me back the amount I have paid into the SS fund over the past 40+ years, and continue to pay, and stop taking payments out of my paycheck. Then, I will consider us "somewhat" even.
Johnson mistakenly says "There is no law or rule anywhere that declares retirement to be an entitlement." Social Security law states: "[ A qualified individual] shall be entitled to an old-age insurance benefit..." The tern derives from the concept that an individual who qualifies is "entitled" to the benefits. Comment on other mistakes in Johnson's column follows.
is not an exclusively "retirement benefit system" any longer. twentysomethings who walk with the benit of a cane are collecting social security benefits. We need to clean up SS to what it was before all those losers and their lawyers started ripping off the system.
social security is really two programs. social security retirement benefits with medicare that people buy into by paying into the system over the required period of time and that pay out on retirement or to certain survivors on death of the person who paid in. the welfare/ medicaid part of the program pays out a smaller amount only to those who did not pay into the system and who have next to no assets or income and can't get them due to age or disabilty. different requirements and different things.
I've been surprised lately, thanks to connections on Facebook, how many of my HS classmates who went on to become teachers, military, other types of gov't employees, are retired at 55 or 60. For employees of businesses (small and, increasingly, large) pensions are gone. An especially acute problem for entrepreneurs, those zillions of people who have been laid off and have to start over with their own small businesses. It really is true, SS was designed to kick in after most beneficiaries were dead.
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