Alvin Giddens Jr., 24, is married, with a daughter and another child on the way. He works at the AT&T store on Veterans Boulevard in McComb and, like others, pays 6 percent of his wages into a diminishing Social Security fund that may not be around for his retirement.
“Here at my job they are putting it aside, but I’m like, ‘I need to get some of that money now,’ ” he said.
Giddens says he finds himself thinking this even more with the state of the economy.
“The way things are going, it may not be there for me to get,” he said.
Social Security is on track to run out in 2033, when Giddens will be 45 years old and about two decades shy of retirement age.
Social Security is the federal insurance program that is supposed to provide benefits to retirees, the unemployed and the disabled.
It’s funded by 12.4 percent of employee wages, with employees paying half and their employers paying the other half. Self-employed people pay the full amount.
The program used to provide as much as seven times what people put into the system, but over the years, the program’s finances have dwindled and people are now getting less than what they paid into it.
The trend is exacerbated by longer life spans and the looming retirements of Baby Boomers, who have just begun to swell the rolls of those receiving benefits.
At one end of the situation, a generation is working during a tough economy and seeing a substantial amount of their paychecks go to a fund they may never benefit from. At the other, a generation has its benefits intact, albeit smaller, and can only watch generations after them struggle.
Although Giddens would like to see all of the money from his paycheck that is now going to FICA — the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, which shores up Social Security — he knows, however, that it would be a good thing to have when he gets older — if it’s still there.
“I would personally like to have it (now), but when I’m 60 years old and me and my wife are settled down somewhere it would be nice to get it,” he said.
In order to save the fund, the government has two equally difficult options: either cut benefits to seniors who receive an average $1,235 from Social Security each month — $1,111 for disability checks — or take more from those, like Giddens, who are working.
“I look at my grandma now and if they cut it she wouldn’t have any income,” he said. “Then on my end if they raise it, it hurts the people who work.
“Both ways are hard,” Giddens said. “Honestly, at this point, I really couldn’t say. It is so up and down.”
Sarah Loyacano, a 67-year-old retiree who volunteers at the St. Andrew’s Senior Center, has to watch as her children work toward something that may not exist in the future.
She doesn’t think that her children and grandchildren will have the same comfort she had when they get to be her age. She says that no matter what is done, cutting benefits or raising taxes, the situation will spiral further out of control.
“It is sad,” Loyacano said. “We are $16 trillion in debt, it doesn’t matter what they do, it isn’t going to help.”
Some people on the other hand have faith that the government will resolve the problem.
“I’m not scared Social Security will go away,” Diane McGarry, 70, said.
She believes that the people will hold the government to its duty to protect its citizens.
The government “would be in danger” if they didn’t fix it, she said.
“I don’t think at my age I will lose mine,” said Lucy Richmond, a 71-year-old retired teacher from Otken Elementary School in McComb.
However, when asked if she thought younger generations will receive Social Security benefits, she said matter-of-factly, “I certainly don’t.
“I know something has to be done,” she said.
