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unless there are radical, fundamental and comprehensive changes in the economic system.
Social Security was designed to provide basic needs for elderly people decades of inflation and exploitation and transition to feudalism ago.
Just ask any elderly person who is trying to live on their social security.
Anecdotal but pertinent example: A man went back to the town he had lived in 30 years ago. He rode through his old neighborhood. The building that housed his first apartment was still standing, he asked if he could look around. The current resident was friendly and said yes. Nothing in the apartment had changed. Same noisy fridge, same worn out linoleum, a little more worn.
"How much is the rent now?" asked the older man. "When I lived here I paid $125."
"Wow," the young guy said. "I'm paying $1200, and it's a pretty good deal for this town."
The older man went on his way and stopped at the diner where he had washed dishes to help pay his way through school. He was pleasantly surprised to find the same cook in the kitchen, white-haired, wrinkled, but still cooking.
He told the cook how much his old apartment would cost him today, and mentioned something about how even the $125 was tough for him on his dishwaher wage. "I don't think I got paid more than a couple of dollars an hour, if that," he said.
"I'm getting $5.50 now," said the cook. "I live with my daughter and her husband."
During the time that the man had been away, the cost of even modest housing had multiplied more than ten times, but the wage for modest employment had multiplied not quite three times.
Millions of people have already been priced out of the medical care market, out of the health insurance market, out of the housing market.
What makes anyone think that whatever their social security benefit is in 30 years that it will buy them a place in the shrinking survival market?
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