Issue 13

By David Thomas Graves

Before You Read This – You Need to Know Why It Was Written.

This isn’t just a takedown of Social Security. This is an unfiltered, unapologetic truth bomb about how the government sold the American workforce a dream, and delivered a trap.

If you're reading this, you probably work for a living. You're not some hedge fund manager or corporate puppet collecting passive income off the backs of other people. You're part of the backbone. Union member. Freelancer. Tradesperson. Contractor. Entrepreneur. Salaried worker. Parent. Provider. Grit, not privilege.

And you’ve probably been told the same thing your whole life:“Pay into Social Security, and it’ll be there when you retire.” A small promise. A quiet reward. A little bit of dignity after decades of showing up, clocking in, and carrying the weight.

That’s the story. That’s what we were sold. But here’s the truth: It was never true. And it was never meant to be.

Social Security isn’t a retirement plan. It never was - It’s not a savings account - It’s not an investment vehicle - It’s not your money growing for your future. It’s a government-operated liquidity funnel disguised as compassion. And from the very beginning, it was designed to serve Washington, not the worker.

The Origin Story No One Taught You

Let’s go back to 1935. America is on its knees. The Great Depression is strangling the economy. Banks are collapsing. Unemployment is near 25%. People are starving. Cities are crumbling. The New Deal is in full swing. And Franklin D. Roosevelt is looking for a solution - not just to fix the economy, but to restore faith in the federal government’s ability to control it.

The government, by the way, is broke. Dead broke. And back then, the U.S. was still on the gold standard - meaning they couldn’t just print their way out of trouble. Every dollar had to be backed by physical gold reserves. No modern monetary theory. No debt-leveraging. No magic tricks.

So FDR did what any desperate politician with no fiscal tools and mounting unrest would do: He got creative. He needed a way to bring in massive revenue, immediately, but without triggering panic or resistance from the public, business class, or Wall Street. So instead of calling it what it was, a tax - he called it a “retirement system.”

He created Social Security and branded it as a trust fund, a safety net, a compassionate solution. But here’s what he didn’t tell you:

● The average life expectancy in 1935 was about 60.

● The retirement age was set at 65.

● Many workers never collected a dime.

Let that sink in. The plan was never to pay you. The plan was to make you feel safe while funding the government’s balance sheet. This was not a benevolent program for the working class. It was a cleverly disguised tax on labor that worked like an annuity, but without the payout.

A Trust Built on Assumptions That Never Held Up

From Day One, Social Security operated on a “pay-as-you-go” model. That means the money you pay in doesn’t get saved. It doesn’t get invested. It doesn’t sit in your name earning interest.

It gets spent. Right now. Instantly.

You fund the retiree ahead of you. The person behind you funds you. A chain of dependency dressed up as a system of security. But here’s the fatal flaw: this only works when the base of the system is always growing.

In the 1940s, it worked because there were over 40 workers for every retiree. The demographic curve was wide at the bottom and narrow at the top.

But today? - We’re down to fewer than 3 workers for every retiree. And that number is falling fast, thanks to lower birth rates, a shrinking workforce, longer lifespans, and a boomer retirement wave that the system was never structurally built to handle.

This isn't a hiccup. This is a full-on failure of the original design.

The Foundation of Your Retirement Is a Lie

Let’s put real numbers on it:

● Every time you get paid, 6.2% of your wages are withheld for Social Security.

● Your employer “matches” that with another 6.2% - except, let’s be honest, that’s still your money. That’s part of your compensation package that you’ll never see.

● That’s 12.4% of your labor disappearing before you even touch it.

Now ask yourself: Where does it go? What do you get? And when? You don’t have a personal account. You don’t have a growing balance. You don’t have an investment portfolio. You don’t own any of it.

All you have is a promise that one day, if the system still exists and you live long enough, the government will start paying you back some of what you put in, at their discretion, not yours.

Oh, and if you die early? Your kids don’t get it. Your spouse gets limited survivor benefits. Your wealth dies with you. Now compare that to what could happen if you were allowed to keep and invest that 12.4% for yourself. We’ll get to those numbers in Part Two.

The Political Protection Racket

So why hasn’t this house of cards collapsed yet? Because it’s protected by mythology. Because criticizing Social Security has been equated with attacking the working class, when the real betrayal is defending a broken lie.

The press won’t challenge it. Politicians won’t touch it. And most unions still treat it like sacred ground.

We’ve built an entire national identity around pretending this system works. We drape it in nostalgia. We call it “earned.” We label it untouchable. And in doing so, we silence the very people it's failing, working Americans who are being drained by a system that pretends to protect them while slowly sinking under its own weight.

The Illusion Was Never Designed to Hold

The brilliance of Social Security wasn’t in the policy, it was in the marketing. FDR didn’t sell Americans a tax. He sold them hope with a payout date. He didn’t admit the program was pay-as-you-go. He called it a “trust fund.” He didn’t say it would prop up the Treasury. He said it would protect workers.

And most people believed him. Why wouldn’t they? The government was promising stability in the middle of a national crisis. The labor movement embraced it. Newspapers backed it. The business class tolerated it.

But just because a lie is well-packaged doesn’t make it true. Just because it came from a president doesn’t make it moral. And just because we’ve lived with it for 90 years doesn’t make it sustainable.

Because once the demographics shifted, and people started living longer, the structure collapsed. Quietly. Gradually. Without anyone ringing the alarm. And instead of fixing it, the government expanded it. They added disability benefits. They added survivors’ benefits. They ballooned the payout model to cover more and more people… without ever changing the basic funding mechanism.

Why? Because that’s how you buy political loyalty without paying upfront. You promise future benefits. You win elections. And you leave the bill for someone else to figure out.

The Real Cost Is Ownership Lost

This isn’t just about numbers. It’s not just about fiscal policy or actuarial math. This is about freedom, about whether the labor of the American worker belongs to the worker… or the government.

Because under this system:

● You don’t choose where your retirement savings go.

● You don’t control how it’s invested.

● You can’t pull it early to buy a home, pay off debt, or fund your future.

● You can’t leave it to your children.

You don’t own your future. The system does. It decides what you get, when you get it, and whether you get anything at all. That’s not a benefit. That’s bondage. And for anyone under 50, the writing is already on the wall: you’re paying into a system that can’t and won’t deliver what you were promised. It’s not going to “run out” in 2033. It already ran out. The moment the payouts exceeded the revenue and the trust fund started drawing IOUs - it was already over.

Everything since has been political theater. A stall tactic. A delay.

So Why Keep Paying?

That’s the question no one in Washington wants you to ask. Because once you ask it, once you see the con for what it is, the entire narrative collapses. The New Deal. The safety net. The “sacred promise.” None of it holds up to daylight.

The Social Security system we have today isn’t protecting the working class, it’s hollowing them out. It’s draining money from people who already can’t afford to save, and promising them scraps in return.

And we’re told to smile, salute the program, and keep working.

That’s not patriotism. That’s abuse.

The truth is, Social Security was never meant to take care of you, it was meant to take care of the government. The branding said “safety net,” but the architecture says “revenue scheme.” And the longer we keep calling it a retirement plan, the more we enable a system that feeds on trust, silence, and economic ignorance.

In Part Two, we pull the gloves off completely. I’m going to show you, step by step, why Social Security checks every box of a Ponzi scheme, from its dependency on new contributors to its lack of actual investment, and how it’s fueling inflation, degrading your dollar, and eroding your future.

Get ready. This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a blueprint. And it’s hiding in plain sight.

© David Thomas Graves 2025