Happy Birthday, Social Security! I hope I’m going as strong and beloved as you are when I turn 80.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Today is Social Security’s 80th birthday, and in its honor, let’s take a moment to honor a system that is both an essential component of retirement security and a real testament to the importance of the role of government.

I realize we live in an age where that role is disparaged daily, in many cases by the very people who are paid by the rest of us to do a better job of running the government. And yet, even while gridlock and dysfunction persist, Social Security keeps on trucking along, providing a progressive, fully vested, universal, guaranteed pension to nearly all elderly Americans. And it does so highly efficiently, with administrative costs that amount to less than 1 percent of annual benefits, “far below the percentages for private retirement annuities.”

So, raise a glass (of Metamucil?) in her honor, and consider these points:

Most of the benefits of Social Security’s retirement program go to people who really need them. Using data from the Social Security Administration, the figure above shows the percentage of elderly individuals’ total income that comes from either Social Security or from earnings and assets combined. As you can see, Social Security retirement benefits provide an average of 83 percent of the income of the poorest 40 percent of Americans aged 55 or older (annual income: $22,021 or less, including Social Security). Without that income, 42.6 percent of seniors over 65 would have been in poverty in 2013; with it, the poverty rate among seniors was only 9.5 percent. Remember th]at next time some fact-bashing partisan claims “we fought a war on poverty and poverty won.”

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/14/happy-birthday-social-security-i-hope-im-going-as-strong-and-beloved-as-you-are-when-i-turn-80/

[harrose]

1. Sadly, by the time I'm ready to retire....

... some Rethugs will no doubt have looted the entire thing and pocketed the money.