Allow me to be angry about something that makes a lot of other people angry for reasons they don’t fully understand.
Full disclosure: I receive benefits from the Social Security Administration(SSA). I just started to receive these meager benefits a few years ago and was surprised to see that, despite what many people think or believe, is that I cannot afford to even remotely live on the salary of an organization that many people, even those in the highest powers of government, openly consider to be “parasites”. In my estimation of the word, parasites have to be able to at least survive in order to be attributed with the term at all.
As for my experience, I currently work in an extremely part time position at my local high school and while I am honored to have the opportunity to work to begin with, I am struggling to find a sense of satisfaction in my work because I feel as if I’m doing so little to begin with. I understand this mindset is wrong and misguided, but I cannot help but shake the feeling I am meant to do, be, if not more, then something else.
I want more not just for my egoistic sense of purpose, but because I see what others around me do on a daily basis just to make a living and it makes me feel inadequate in comparison. My mother stands over piping hot liquid for hours, making drinks and memorizing 10-15 different orders and then making them all within a few minutes, only to come home and have to do chores I can’t help her with without taking twice as long. My father keeps an entire school district running, both mechanical and personnel, while finding time to help at the coffee shop, cut and split wood for the woodburner, take me to appointments and events, on top of assisting others who need help. Yet, here I am, taking days to type what some could do in minutes. Yes, making posters and flyers is a noble profession, but it feels like I’m doing a mere regurgitation of what others have said and made without actually doing anything that substantially improves their lives. I want to advocate because I often feel inadequate when I have no reason to simply because I am not able to do what is deemed adequate by a society that sees disability as a burden rather than an extension of reality.
Plus, let’s be brutally honest, it doesn’t make fiscal sense for me to work so little for the school, for me to not only have to report my wages to SSA, but to work for sometimes less than the meager funding the government gives me. Just for SSA to take it away completely because I make less than what they pay me to begin with or, heaven forbid, save more than $2,000 in my collective accounts. $2,000 doesn’t even cover the average rent in small cities anymore, let alone the multitude of other bills. Yet, I still often get paid less than I could afford to lose by simply living. That is the absolute absurdity of the situation millions of Americans face each and every day. We’re not getting the “free handouts “ so many people claim we are, we are getting entrenched in a system we cannot often afford to either escape from, nor be useful as a safety net. I feel this paradox is one of the main driving forces behind my apathetic anticipation. In order to get off the system entirely, I need to find a full time job that I can physically do on a regular basis, no matter the physical or mental state I’m in that pays substantially more than what I’m currently being given.
I need a system that doesn’t give me enough to live in order to live long enough to get a job that I may not be able to perpetually do, only for the system to be utterly useless when I would need it most.
Plus, I can’t move or work in Ohio without changing my tax information and therefore mess up my entire SSI from scratch again. I would essentially have to start from square one all over again just to work in a state I live 20 minutes from.
I’ve come to the conclusion that only a small percentage of people who use the SSA are genuinely the “parasites” we’ve so often seen them made up to be. Instead, the SSA is the one who forces people to become a slave to a system they cannot escape from.
The problem is taking the SSA away altogether will be taking what little money millions of taxpayers cannot afford to lose to begin with and therefore make billions of people go bankrupt and, without any other alternative, die in multiple ways, whether it be medical deprivation, lack of housing, or starvation, including grandparents and older retirees who are just trying to survive or other people who often get overlooked in the shuffle of things, like veterans or foster children. While I do agree that the exploiters of the system are a small, potentially significant problem, making the SSA more equitable and less exploitable can arise from simple changes, rather than just outright obliteration.
On top of all this, if it wasn’t already difficult enough for me to get a job in the first place, the rollback and rampant attacks on so called “DEI” programs and policies is making it all the more difficult to get an interview for the possibility of a sustainable job, let alone a job itself.
If it was not for my parents and the generosity of my family, friends, and community members, I would be dead.
There is no sugarcoating it. I would either be dead, in an institution, or on the side of the highway because a system that many see as breeding “parasites“ would not and continues to not give me enough money to survive on.
I would be dead.
I don’t want more “handouts”, I would just like to survive if need be.
Millions and billions of people are in the similar situation without even realizing it.
Please consider that.
We don’t need to strip a system.
We need to fix it.
Calm and Cultured 