On 9 Oct 2006 14:08:30 -0700, "
wrote:


wrote:
And one of the biggies...ladies and gentlemen, children or all ages,
Dingaling brothers and P.T. Barnum are proud to present the one, the
only...drum roll, please....TA-DA!!!! The Social Security Act, ch. 531,
49 Stat. 620, 1935, supposedly meant to prevent the truly elderly, the
truly disabled, children, and a few others from starving during the
depression...now, 62-year-old retired millionaires and "disabled" folks
cash SS checks on their way to the golf and tennis club...and best of
all, this safety net does all of this wonderful stuff and only needs
some 65,000 employees to do it...

The SS system has always been a welfare system disguised as
a retirement system in order to make it acceptable. But most folks
with a lot of amount of money naturally never have enough, so the
fantasy was forced into a highly warped reality in which the former
is used to justify the latter.

I think it is simply yet another bureaucracy run amok, and since most
folks (or those that vote, anyway) either do or think they will get
something out of it, there is much more momentum carrying it forward
than attempting to stop it from lurching along like a hippopotamus, on
four too many Martinis and all dolled up in some Paris-Hilton-does-Tokyo
goofball getup...or blotzed on mango-and-squid-ink half-vodka, half-ouzo
Rob Roys, if one prefers...

By-the-by, in its first year, 1936, $250,000USD was the admin
budget...run that through a historic or relative value calculation...

Congratulations, that's a fine example of "neocon"-style "history."

It may be that, but it's a much finer example of someone simply glancing
through the Act and noticing the beginning admin budget...

It
really doesn't matter what the hell the budget was in 1936 because
the hiring to support year 1 operations - year 1 to begin in January
of `37 -
wasn't started until November 1936. At the end of 1936 there were
2,500 employees, the majority of whom had been at work for well under
a month at that point.

I'll take your word for it. I don't care enough to research it - see
above drunken hippos...or if one prefers, Paris Hilton...

TC,
R