"An elaborate funeral with flowers, or your lamentations at our death means nothing to us. But your love, kindness, and generosity to us while we are alive are most important. We want to die feeling you will have no cause for remorse over your treatment of us.
"Many of you have accumulated or will inherit large fortunes directly or indirectly due to our hard work and sacrifices, you accept the fat of the land as your due and for your own pleasure, without even gratitude to those few that still live who helped to make your fortune. Your indifference to our condition is one of the crimes of the ages. We don't want your charity or money."
At this point I interrupted the old man with a question, "Aren't you too critical and too severe in your denunciation of children?"
"No, not when I speak of those whom the shoe fits. However, I am not condemning all children; and in justice to a great many of them, I have heard of and seen many good children who have taken care of their old parents. A recent war hero who was given $15,000 by a magazine for his story immediately placed it as a trust fund for his mother. I know of others who have helped to finance an income property purchase to help a father. Others have ruined their future lives and their opportunities by being saddled with the burden of supporting their parents and families. Talented children have abandoned their education and training at an early age to go to work to help support their parents or to contribute to the upkeep of younger brothers and sisters. Many of them have been forced to remain old maids and bachelors on account of their parents.
"Society in the long-run loses in this antiquated practice of shifting the burden of responsibility to young shoulders. To my mind, the support of old people is a social problem that should be taken care of by social security boards. Help and protection from these boards would rehabilitate families made destitute by the burden. Society as a whole would greatly benefit by creating new trained members and workers. Society owes all of us a moral obligation and a just debt. It should give us compensation, not charity. We ignorant human beings, up to now, have not made any concerted effort to solve our problem. Yes, a beginning has been made, but it is inadequate.
"Society has created the federal old age and survivors insurance operated by the United States government through the Social Security Board. This means that those few will have something to live on who have reached the age of sixty-five and are helpless. This is a step forward, but an insufficient one, for the payments allotted are only enough to pay the rent of the poorest living quarters. They still keep us in dependence. Does society or Congress think that the starvation stipend we are privileged to receive, twenty to sixty-eight dollars and fifty cents per month, is enough, when according to the present poor man's standard of living, the minimum living cost is eighteen dollars per week per person? Many of us self-respecting old persons are still able to do some kind of work; but because of our age, we are lucky if we find any. When offered hard, menial, night, graveyard hour services, we accept them rather than live on the starvation Social Security allowances or depend on some of our children or on charity.
"Old people should be guaranteed freedom from want and dependence. With every worker in this country contributing to Social Security, and only a small percentage of dependents reaching the qualifying age of sixty-five, the accumulation of unearned premiums must be enormous. This surplus should be used to increase the allowances to dependents. Instead, the government flagrantly uses the major part of this earmarked money for other purposes.
"All contributions made by us and employers from our weekly wages for Social Security according to the Brookings Institute report have accumulated and used as follows:"
"The Brookings report says these tremendous sums for security programs ultimately would have to come annually from new taxation, regardless of the monthly payroll taxes. The proof of this was given in a Senate speech by Sen. John L. McClennan (D., Ark.). He revealed that $38,250,000,000 belonging to the present Old Age, Unemployment, Railroad Retirement, and other such trust funds financed by direct payroll tax, had been dissipated by the government on a hundred and one other spending projects."[18]
"Furthermore, the law should be changed in regard to this $50.00 per month earnings. It should be at least $75.00 per month. In other words, an aged person earning $75.00 per month should forfeit the Social Security pension for the period of his employment.