I got something in the mail the other day that said that in a few years, I’ll be eligible to receive Social Security benefits. That came as quite a surprise because, if you listen to the toothless hillbillies who show up to Donald Trump white-power rallies, there is no such thing as a government program that actually works.
The fact that I am even known to the Social Security Administration probably shatters the myth held by several long-time readers who sincerely believe that I am a kept man, living off the labors of my long-suffering wife. Yeah, well, as it turns out, y’all can suck it.
Now, my wife does work, but she does so because she wants to. This is the 21st century and all. To be fair, there may well have been a brief time in the late 1980s when she was simultaneously barefoot and pregnant.
As for me, I’ve worked lot and lots of different jobs over the years, including several for which I was paid in American currency. Back when I was a stay-at-home father, I pieced together a patchwork of jobs around my wife’s schedule so that our kids wouldn’t go to day care or have babysitters. I got pretty good at it, to the point that my wife would tell me that I had 10 mini-jobs that added up to half a career.
Some of the jobs are big-time; others, not so much. For example, as I’ve mentioned recently, I run the scoreboard at Amphi High varsity football games. Three-and-a-half to four hours in a press box with temperatures that have actually reached 105 degrees. Then, like magic, a couple weeks later, I get a check in the mail for (after taxes) an amount in the high-$20 range. And there are five home games per year, so you do the math.
I’ve been thinking that I should pick up a couple extra jobs to add to that gub’mint cheese nest-egg that I’ve been building up all these years. Like Liam Neeson said, I have a particular set of skills, and there are some jobs I’ve been keeping my eye on.
• First off, I think I’ll become a consultant who gets paid to find new superintendents for school districts. That’s got to be the gig of all time. Just think about it. You’ve got the Tucson Unified School District Board, which is the board that serves as the standard for all other such boards in America. They hire some guy to be their superintendent, but then, after a little while, they decide that he doesn’t match their blouse, so they dump him.
They name some other guy to be the interim Superintendent while they conduct a search for a permanent replacement. They spend thousands and thousands of dollars on consultant fees and when the process is all over…they remove the “interim” tag. So, apparently, these “consultants” look through a bunch of resumes, pick out a few that appear to have interesting stuff in them (including one from a woman who got chased out of her last job), then hand them over to the Board and go laughing all the way to the bank. I could do that.
Heck, I could have made that recommendation for half the amount that they paid to other consultants. All that remains now is to come up with a catchy name for my new endeavor. I’ve already got my slogan: I can do next-to-nothing for next-to-nothing.
• Maybe I could stay involved with the media. I could be the next White House Press Secretary. Judging by the current one, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, there are only three requirements for the job. You have to:
1. Look like you work at WalMart … and do a whole lot of shopping there, too.
2. Have a 1970s hairstyle. And
3. When asked a question you don’t like, be able to make a face like you just ate a gas-station burrito and it’s about to attempt an escape.
Did anybody else wince when the White House named the replacement for Anthony Scaramucci? The new White House Communications Director (and the person to whom the aforementioned Huckabee Sanders will report to) is named Hope Hicks.
Some punchlines are just too easy.
• I could be Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller’s whiteness consultant and maybe nudge her into the 20th century. (Apparently, the 21st century would be asking too much.) I could explain to her that Pat Boone did not have the first hit record of “Good Golly Miss Molly.” I would explain that it was actually a Negro guy. (I’d leave out any mention of Little Richard’s sexual orientation. That would send her screaming into the street.)
As time would go by, I would break it to her that The Beatles did not write “Twist and Shout” and the “The Brady Bunch” was not a documentary, but rather a sitcom. I think slowly she would come around to realizing what a dumbass she is.
On the old TV show “Scrubs,” there used to be a black guy who got hired to walk around at doctors’ conventions. He would approach people, snap his fingers, point at the people and say, “Bust a move!” I could do that around Miller’s office, but I’d have to dial down the hipness factor. Snap my fingers, point, and say, “You Light Up My Life.”
This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2017.
I thought you had to have a job to get Social Security. Just sayin”
It is normally an inferiority complex that forces one to make degrading comments about others.
America has been built by rugged individuals that never envisioned sucking at the taxpayers teat for their existence. The SS system is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme workers are forced to fund while Congress moves the goal posts and redirects money away from those funding it.
Bill Clinton initiated an income tax on SS benefits so they could prop up a failing Medicare program. Doesn’t that tell you anything?
But toothless hillbillies says quite a bit about the Walmart hating author.
Another ugly intro from the liberal idiot, get a life, or better yet a job.
Get a job ?? Good one Mark. You have a better chance of hitting the Power Ball twice in a row.
“Getting involved with the media” makes sense, Tom. You should try it.
Danehy, don’t count on Social Security to provide much of a backstop for whatever else you do — and you will have to do it, whatever it is. Social Security is no windfall. I paid quite a lot into the system during my more lucrative periods of employment, so I qualified for almost-adequate benefits if I waited to take normal retirement (age 66). But faced with the choice of finding a decent-paying job in my sixties — probability, zero — or creating my own business to employ me, when I was 62 I took what SSA calls “early retirement.” It’s a lot less than had I waited to turn 66, but I didn’t have the leisure to wait.
I used my lower SS payouts to cover my bare-bone costs of living and once more became an entrepreneur. You’re not supposed to do this, work while you’re collecting if it exceeds a certain amount, but when the alternative is penury until you drop, you break some rules. (Hey, it’s money I paid in!)
Fortunately, my new company worked out, sufficiently so that I don’t have to completely rely on my continuing early-retirement checks — which would be totally inadequate if I had to rely on them to pay personal and property taxes, utilities, premiums on supplemental health insurance (Medicare is fine, but it doesn’t pay for everything), cable Internet, cellphone service, auto insurance, and occasional travel and nights out, etc., etc.
The rather stupid commenters above deride Social Security as some sort of government gravy train. It’s not. It’s a small monthly stipend for basic survival. Unless there are reforms in the future that help workers when they’re past “productive age” — whatever the 1% decides that is — Americans (unlike citizens in most of Europe and Canada) will need other income, whether investments, exceptional jobs, or their own inheritance to get by. Screw the “rugged individualism” sloganeering. It’s braggadocio, a hoax. The rugged ones die first.
Also per those fools: SS is no “Ponzi scheme.” It helps a hundred million Americans save a little so they don’t have to rely on the kindness of strangers (in the same predicament), payday and conventional loan sharks, or eating a lot of ramen to keep their heads above water. With good fortune and planning, it’s also enough to allay the stress that brings on sickness, heart attacks, and early death. You have to be pretty damn cruel to wish an early demise on anyone, just so that you can some utter alt-right crapola like that above. Or hide your own fear at growing old and meager. Suck it up, it’s your fate, too.
PS I like the Ally Miller job opp a little. You can’t be held accountable for not warning someone who’s not listening that she’s once again about to put her foot in her mouth or walk off a cliff.
On the other hand, it would mean a lot of curtseying to self-anointed Foothills nobility, the rather gauche and self-absorbed elite who keep Miller “employed” and off the streets. And you must be prepared to be fired on a whim. “Him? Gone! Next?”
Replacing Sarah Huckabee Sanders is sounding pretty good right now. You could help the Orange Man “peel his rind” — come across as human, no small accomplishment — and even get a book out of it.
Yeah, that’s the ticket! Do it quick, though, certainly before 2018 when he’s probably gonna be gone. Mike Pence won’t be half the fun.