The folks who got the benefit of avoiding those taxes have now retired or are the baby-boomers about to retire. One problem: they never paid back the money they borrowed from Social Security. Now they want their Social Security benefits but haven't the means to repay the debt. Their kids will have to pay it. We seniors and our political leaders of both parties gambled that some magical thing would happen to make that debt disappear. It didn't happen and never could.

But the kids also want to avoid higher taxes, even to repay Social Security so that their elders will be secure. And the kids also want Social Security for themselves in the future.

Our government policies - which we people once supported - are guaranteeing the demise of Social Security. We do not want tax increases to repay what the old folks borrowed; and they don't want any reduction in Social Security benefits. That means that the Social Security trust fund will slowly go broke.

But it may not be so slowly. The Social Security trust fund is kept solvent by regular contributions of Social Security taxes, paid by working employees and their employers. However, when employers ship American jobs overseas where labor is cheaper, they also stop the flow of Social Security contributions by American employees - and by the American employers. Overseas workers do not contribute to our retirement system and therefore employers do not either.

This is a double whammy - we lose good jobs and we pull the few remaining props out from under Social Security. But then that has been the goal of a lot of people for a long time.

We need to find some kind of Social Security tax to impose on imports of finished goods or parts of goods for American company products, whether toys or cars or TV's, to be used specifically to supplement Social Security and replace the lost (and borrowed) Social Security taxes. We may have lost the jobs to corporate greed, but we don't have to surrender retirement security too.

Edward B. Golla
Springettsbury Township