It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and we perhaps should apply this idea to reforming our Social Security system; it seems there are almost as many proposed solutions are there are proposers.

Fundamentally, given our form of government, any program that allows huge sums of money to accumulate in what amounts to a slush fund for use at some time in the future will result in much, if not most, of that money being used for other purposes. Simple as that. So, any change that would have each taxpayer’s contributions to Social Security be earmarked for him, and him alone, would go a long way towards solving that aspect of the problem.

The system in place today taxes present workers to pay benefits to present retirees; today’s workers are required to accept as a matter of faith that future workers will do likewise for them. But what if there aren’t enough workers in the future to do that? What if human nature asserts itself to say, “To hell with this, I have my own needs to meet”?

Let us look back into history a bit: There once was a trade union known as the International Typographical Union [ITU] that represented newspaper and commercial printers in both the United States and Canada. The Union collected dues from its members and that money was used to pay the costs of running the union, but most of the money was earmarked for what was known as the Pension and Mortuary Fund. When a printer retired, he was paid a monthly benefit, and when he died his surviving spouse received a small lump sum benefit to help pay final expenses.

Now, please take note that the fund was known as a pension fund, but the Union itself never referred to it as such, not specifically. Printers looked forward happily to their old-age pension that would be paid monthly, but the Union never used that word; the word used was old-age benefit. And there is a significant difference. A pension is something a man has earned, and one way or another is in his name awaiting his retirement. A benefit, on the other hand, is something a man is entitled to, but is dependent upon the ability of a union, a company, or a government to pay.

Understand, then, that while one may refer to a Social Security pension, the government never uses that word; it is a benefit, pure and simple.

Eventually, the ITU came upon hard times as the result of automation in the printing industry, causing membership to decline as there were fewer and fewer job opportunities in the trade. It soon became clear that the money tree to pay the retirement benefit was becoming bare of leaves, and soon there would be no one left to fertilize that tree with dues money. So in January of one year, every retiree received a letter along with his pension check informing him that come the end of the year, there would be no more checks. Nada. The end.

Chester A. Riley would have referred to that as a “revoltin’ development” — the only way to dodge that bullet is to be certain whatever Social Security reform occurs eventually creates individual accounts for individual taxpayers. Anything less than that is a sham.

(Kirby lives in Waynesville and is a retired newspaperman. He can be reached at kirb6796@bellsouth.net.)