Persuasive Essay On Social Security

1167 Words5 Pages
The U.S. government is in debt, lots of it. This means that the government has borrowed tons of money to pay its bills. These are bills to pay for our military, for example, namely to send troops over to Afghanistan and Iraq, and to provide military aid to countries like South Korea and Pakistan. We also have to borrow money to pay for other bills, like for Social Security and Medicare. The purpose of Social Security is so that our government is able to pay for basic necessities and Medicare. Everybody who has a job has to pay a little bit of their paycheck into the U.S. Social Security System. So, let's say that I earn $500 per week, then I might have to pay maybe 5% of that, or $25 a week to the Federal government. They hold onto that money and they give it to old(er) people who've retired. Everybody who's retired at an age of 62 receives a paycheck every month to help them make ends…show more content…
Between 1945 and 1964 we had a baby boom in this country. Many, many babies were born (after World War II ended in 1945) and now these people are between 47 and 66. Now they're all just beginning to retire, and there's been millions and millions more people retiring in the near future (the next 20 years) than there were ever before. What does Social Security have to do with this? The government will have to pay Social Security benefits to these huge numbers of retirees with the money they collect from people who are working now. Medicare is essentially a free or very cheap health insurance program for old people. So all these new old people will be getting Medicare ... plus health care is getting more and more and more expensive these days -- for doctors' visits, for procedures like x-rays or others, and for medication. It's a hugely expensive program for two reasons, then -- more and more people eligible for the program and the fact that health care is getting more and more
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