How to save social security

Here’s an idea to help save Social Security. Anyone collecting it who doesn’t need it – a single person filing separately and reporting a gross income of at least $125,000 or a couple filing jointly and reporting a gross income of at least $250,000 – shouldn’t collect it. Yeah, Sam and I realize if you paid into it you earned it, but you have enough money, you don’t need more.

If you’re single with a gross income of $125,000 or a couple with a gross income of $250,000 you probably are writing off most of your income taxes already. You probably own a boat or motor home and take vacations in Mexico and other enchanted lands. You enjoy going out to dinner and live concerts; you drop several hundred bucks in Vegas every year. Leave social security to the people who really need it.

We realize you could give your social security check to charity. That would be a nice gesture. But wouldn’t it be nicer still just to leave the money in the kitty to help those monthly recipients who really count on Uncle Sam to survive?

Imagine yourself in some other person’s sanitary incontinence diapers. If your social security check stops coming, you’ll have to stop buying the diapers. You might wet yourself (or worse) in public or go back to wetting the bed at night. What if you embarrassed your grandkids in front of their friends because there was pee running down your pant leg or the front of your dress? What if you couldn’t afford to buy drugs for your osteoporosis or your arthritis or your diabetes?

Without that monthly social security check, a lot of retired persons could no longer afford to feed their pets (Sam’s growling). Without that monthly social security check your 90-year old grandpa couldn’t afford gas for his 1956 Edsel. Grandma could no longer afford her cartons of Marlboros.

Without a social security check, it doesn’t matter how much of a senior discount you get at the restaurant or at the movies. You still can’t afford to go out. You’ll have to buy more mac and cheese and stay at home. And you’ll have to eat mush even if you don’t reside in assisted living. Of course, if you’ve forgotten how to boil water you’re in trouble.

No more of those silvery pom-pom senior mom perms anymore either – you know the kind that make you look like someone pasted tight little platinum curls to your head. It would be too expensive to go to the hairdresser. Forget your orthotic shoes your reading glasses (hold those arms out a little farther). OMG, what about dentures?

Have mercy on us old geezers and help preserve social security. Back in the 60s when we were growing up and fighting to make free love and marijuana legal, we had no idea we’d live so danged long. We figured the cops would have thrown us in jail without a key, we’d be dead, or we’d be blathering nonsense at a fat little nurse in the nutty-nutty ward by now.

A little help?!