Ar­ti­cle mis­lead­ing

The “CloseUp” ar­ti­cle “So­cial Security isn’t the deal it once was” [News, Aug. 6] was very mis­lead­ing. The ar­gu­ment that a cou­ple would pay out more in their work­ing life span for So­cial Security tax­es than they would re­ceive in ben­efits (if they start­ed col­lect­ing at 65 and lived to their es­ti­mat­ed ex­pect­ed life span) was based upon that av­er­age cou­ple pay­ing out close to $600,000 in So­cial Security tax­es dur­ing their work­ing years.

If you do the math, this mythical cou­ple would have had to have made close to $250,000 a year for 40 years to have paid that much in So­cial Security tax­es. The av­er­age house­hold in­come for dual earn­ers in the U.S. is pres­ent­ly a­bout $67,000. That’s a far cry from a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars a year. This cou­ple would have paid out a­bout $67,000 in So­cial Security tax­es by the time they re­tire. The month­ly pay­ments they would re­ceive would well sur­pass the a­mount of in­vest­ment they made into the fund.

So­cial Security was de­vel­oped to pro­tect the av­er­age A­mer­i­can in their later years. It is re­al­ly an an­nu­i­ty for be­ing a pro­duc­tive A­mer­i­can and still is a very good deal for over 90 percent of all citi­zens. It cer­tain­ly needs to be bet­ter fund­ed but it has helped at least two gen­era­tions of Ameri­cans live with some re­spect and dig­ni­ty in their fi­nal years.

The Urban Institute “think tank” and the AP writ­er of this ar­ti­cle have done a dis­serv­ice to all of us to print such a fab­ri­ca­tion of re­ali­ty.

-- Bob Squaglia, Se­at­tle

More than a re­tire­ment perk

The ar­ti­cle is right: So­cial Security isn't the deal it once was. But there is more to So­cial Security than re­tire­ment ben­efits. An­oth­er is sur­vi­vor ben­efits, which I'd like to ad­dress, based on my re­col­lec­tions and early fam­i­ly docu­ments.

My fa­ther paid into the So­cial Security Administration through pay­roll de­duc­tions from 1937, when the de­duc­tions be­gan, un­til his death in June 1940. He left my moth­er, a daugh­ter age 6, and a son (me) age 9. My moth­er in­i­tial­ly re­ceived month­ly sur­vi­vor ben­efits totaling $61.05 -- $26.17 for her and $17.44 each for my sis­ter and I.

We had no sig­nifi­cant as­sets, and some­how she pro­vid­ed for us on that a­mount. We lived in a mod­est house, had three meals a day, (al­though oc­ca­sion­al­ly a meal was just bread and gra­vy), and had new school clothes each fall. In a­bout 1944 my moth­er went to work and her SSA ben­e­fit was dis­con­tin­ued but ben­efits for my sis­ter and I con­tinued un­til we reached our 18^th birth­days, a wel­come sup­ple­ment to her mod­est wage.

When con­sid­er­ing So­cial Security’s in­come and out­go, es­pe­cial­lynow thatchan­ges are con­tem­plated in Congress, the value of all So­cial Security pro­grams — not just re­tire­ment ben­efits — should be ad­dressed. I don't know what our fam­i­ly would have done with­out our mod­est sur­vi­vor ben­efits.

-- Har­ryPe­ter­sen, Belle­vue