By Toby G. Hayes

Money makes people crazy, that's a given. But Social Security and retirement makes people just plain looney. I spent much of my teen-age years saying, "Would you like fries with that?" I don't want to spend my golden years saying, "Welcome to Wal-Mart! Would you like a cart?" So I guess I can't blame people for getting paranoid.

I worked at a newspaper is St. George for a year as a reporter and basic newsroom go-for. I ran errands, answered phones, etc. Since St. George is a retirement community, I got a lot of really interesting phone calls from well-aged individuals, mostly those who couldn't find their paper, or had complaints about the "pornographic photos" on the sports page of scantily clad young women from last night's gymnastics meet.

But some callers were just plain looney, such as the lady who wanted to know when we had changed our name to The Spectrum and why we weren't The Washington County News anymore. I had to tell the nice old woman that the name had changed 28 years ago, almost a decade before I was even born.

But the best call that came in was an elderly man who wanted us to do a story about all the airplanes flying over town. He was convinced they were dropping deadly poison on the retired population to alleviate the problem of dwindling dollars in the Social Security fund. Yep, Social Security does makes people looney.

Will it make me looney? Of course not. I'm what some people might call a skeptic, to say the least. I've already convinced myself that 39 years from now, when I reach retirement age, Social Security will be a thing of the past, just like legislative funding for higher education. It will be written in the history books. When I get money deducted from my paycheck, it's out of sight, out of mind. It's like FICA. I don't even know what it stands for. All I know is it's money I'm never going to see again.

I'm not counting on Social Security to help me pay for my dentures and bifocals. I may have to accept that I'm ultimately providing for today's retiring baby boomers. The fact is, there may be nothing left of Social Security 50 years from now when I'm searching the driveway for a newspaper that's sitting on the front porch.

--Toby G. Hayes is a USU student and frequent contributor to the HardNews Cafe.

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