Social Security Reality Check: What About the Children

[kerrygoddess]

Every time I start to read the latest on the Social Security issue, I cringe.

It is not all cut and dry, as the Bush administration would have us believe. It is not just about retirement benefits. Social Security also functions as a life and disability insurance program. It provides critical benefits to widows and over five million American children in families whose main source of income has died prematurely or become disabled.

I think about where my daughter and I would be, if there were no Social Security program. It is not a pleasant thought. Just ask any widow who relies on Social Security Survivors Benefits. The average private-sector workers do not have life insurance through their employers, and for low-wage workers, private life insurance and disability insurance is simply a luxury they cannot afford.

In an OP/Ed for the N.Y. Times, Michael C. Laracy points out the bottom line of what the Social Security means to the children…

Today, more children rely on Social Security benefits for part of their family income than on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the nation's main cash welfare program. These benefits represent a substantial share of these families' total income for child beneficiaries. If someone earning $32,000 a year, close to the national average, dies at the age of 40, annual benefits for his three children would be $25,000, replacing roughly 78 percent of his earnings. That's not exactly comfortable, but it's a lot better than the federal poverty level, which is about $19,000 for a family of four.

According to government actuaries, a young worker with average earnings, a young spouse and two young children has Social Security protection equal to a life insurance policy with a face value of $400,000 and a disability policy of about $350,000. For the surviving children and their widowed parent, Social Security represents the difference between getting by and dropping into poverty and reliance on welfare.

That legacy may now be threatened. Some in the Bush administration have endorsed the idea of changing the way in which benefits are determined by linking benefit increases not to the rise in average wages, but rather to the rise in inflation.

More reads on S.S. and an action alert link - http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=200

[Liberty Belle]

1. :kick: This is so important. SSI helps more than the oldies.

[aquart]

2. Apres moi, le deluge.

A sentence that led to the guillotine. A fine and useful machine.

[kerrygoddess]

3. LOL!

[Merlot]

4. The way I understand it

Is that the money you pay in is not the money you get when you retire. The money you pay in goes to people collecting SS now. When you get to SS, your money comes from people who are working and paying in at that time.

The misinformation that we have our own account that we put money into is put forth by gw so that he can appeal to peoples greed by saying "it's your money." But it's everyone's money.

[NIGHT TRIPPER]

5. this type of info needs to hit the mainstream media

The presentation they've been giving on the corporate nightly news is pathetic.
All you hear is that SS is in trouble and we have to do something NOW.
That is simply not the case. There's enough money right now in the system to last well through 2060. And it's a fact that SS is the most successful and least corrupt project in the history of Govt. programs.

Corporations stand to gain a LOT of money if Social Security goes down.
And I'm sure in the propaganda campaign they're going to leave out all those points mentioned by lightupthedarkness.
good link

[kerrygoddess]

6. Their dis-information

Their dis-information campaign is leaving out so many important aspects of what SS does and who it helps. The people who benefit most from SS are the low to middle income families who really, really need it.

So many people do not have a clue about the Survivor Benefits program. The numbers quoted by the NY Times article show the average middle income family. But there are millions of families who never see the amount of benefits that the author cited. However with out that money those families would be a serious trouble.

Because my daughter recieves SS Survivor benefits I have been keeping a close eye on what is being reported about this aspect and so far there has been very little.

What I felt was good about this OP/ED was how clearly he laid out the reasoning the Survivor and Disability Benefits and how critical they are to some families.

I'm looking at the future of other kids like my own.

[AirAmFan]

7. The scrutiny Social Security is getting is bad news for the disabled

and elderly poor getting SSI. Their completely Federalized benefit program rode beneath the radar 10 or 20 years ago, during the outcry over "welfare queens". Now Bush and Rove seem about to rouse the faithful with a whole new set of scapegoats: "WHAT? My FICA taxes are going for WELFARE?!" "Social Security Reform" holds the same potential political bonanza for the far right as "Welfare Reform" did under Reagan and Daddy Bush. Welfare has been reformed to death, and I'm afraid SSI is stuck on the tracks ahead of the same freight train.

[kerrygoddess]

8. We need to stop that freight train!