Saving Social Security

By Ann Medlock, AlterNet. Posted July 6, 2005.

You've no doubt read and heard reams of information about the possible restructuring of Social Security. At least I hope you have. This is important to you, your kids and elders, as well as to your country and its future — so don't let this one slip by you.

I've been watching and listening, and I've come to understand why my heels are sunk deep in the ground on much of what I'm hearing.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that I'm drawing Social Security myself. The monthly check has made it possible for me to work two days less a week and still pay my bills. I use those days to write poetry and fiction.

I like getting my checks from Uncle Sam, because I've done non-profit work for most of my career and nobody stashes fat retirement accounts at such jobs. I chose a working life of public service instead of going on with well-paying work that made me cringe with embarrassment. Thanks to Social Security, that choice hasn't doomed me to the proverbial diet of cat food in my "golden" years.

My situation is a good one, and I'm assured it will not change if/when the system changes for others. The underlying assumption of these assurances is that elders only care about their own hides. I resent that.

Sure, my age means the changes ahead, whatever they are, won't affect me directly as they will my kids and grandkids. But my concern for them, and for the social fabric of my country, means that I am involved and deeply concerned -- nobody messes with the future of my family (and my country), and tells me not to worry about that.

Like a huge percentage of U.S. households, my husband (who also works in the non-profit realm) and I have had a pretty simple savings plan: pay off the mortgage, doubling payments whenever possible, so we own the roof over our heads and the land in our garden before we stop earning paychecks.

That tried-and-true form of savings has served families well in the past; I was appalled when the head of the Fed advised all of us to use our home equity to get liquid and buy more stuff. I was appalled when the national call after 9/11 was not to enlist, to sacrifice, to be brave, but to go buy something in support of the economy.

Have you gotten the impression that our leaders think this is no longer the Home of the Brave? That you and I are too lazy, selfish and stupid to rise to the needs of our times? That we're only useful if we feed our bucks into the maw of the corporations that fund our politicians? It's the ultimate reduction of "citizens" into "consumers."

I refuse to be so reduced. I insist on being a citizen and respected as such. Spend money on stuff I don't need to strengthen my country? They've got to be kidding. I'll stick to The Plan and sock money into that mortgage, with not one unnecessary cent going into a mall -- and nothing into the stock market.

The voices of all my solid, farmer ancestors whisper, "Land, a house, that's real." Buying stuff I don't need: "Damn foolishness." Putting my money at the disposal of multinational corporations and counting on their being able to multiply it would be, they admonish -- "Gambling."

It's also a way to have us all rooting for said multinationals, no matter what they do, just so they pay those dividends. No, no, no, thank you. I've always been a proponent of entrepreneurial small businesses, but I see no evidence that the corporations that dominate the stock market can be trusted to do the right thing for their customers, their employees or the environment, and those things matter to me. I do not wish to be complicit in their misdeeds by funding them. Even worse than being demeaned as a consumer would be signing on as a stockholder, dependent on corporate earnings.

When politicians pretend that they're concerned about small businesses, look behind the rhetoric and you won't find the great guy or gal who invented a new and useful product and built up a growing little company that hires your neighbors and pays local taxes. You're much more likely to find the beneficiaries of that politician's real concern to be transnational corporations that export jobs from this country and offshore their headquarters to avoid U.S. taxes -- at the same time that they're gobbling up U.S. government contracts.

But Americans love entrepreneurs and small businesses so politicians play that song for us, at the same time they actually serve the huge multinationals that fund their campaigns. It's what the late Democratic Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois would label as "pandering."

Ann Medlock is founder and creative director of Giraffe Heroes Project.

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