Why YSK: If you are a US Resident, don’t lose your Social Security card more than 10 times, or else you might need to respawn 💀
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
In accordance with §7213 of the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act of 2004 and 20 CFR 422.103, the number of replacement Social Security cards per person is generally limited to three per calendar year and ten in a lifetime.
I have my paper one in a safety deposit box, with my original birth certificate. I carry around a useless laminated copy for normal BS.
And yes, I say useless laminated, because for some dumb fucking reason, the US issues paper social security cards, and cannot be used officially if you do so. No government agency will accept it, because they expect a piece of paper to last 70+ years like dumb fucks.
My understanding (and it’s very possible that this is just urban legend) is that they’re intentionally made of paper so if they do get lost they’re more likely to fall apart instead of getting stolen.
They’re not really intended to be something you carry around with you all the time, it’s not like you’re usually going to be expected to produce on the spot during your daily routine. It’s more the sort of thing you’d keep at home with your birth certificate and other such personal documents.
IMO the real boneheaded move was making it a wallet-sized card instead of something more like a birth certificate. If you make something in that form factor, people are going to stick it in their wallets and carry it around with them and it’s going to fall apart.
Not yet anyway
Originally, they didn’t expect them to last 70+ years. It’s just that the law hasn’t been updated as life expectancy and technology have.
But your point remains valid
Obligatory life expectancy was only low due to child mortality, so people who survived childhood could reasonably expect to make it to 70.
Child mortality was only so high because child labor was in widespread use around the time that Social Security was first implemented.
Yet, Social Security was established around the same time as the end of child labor in this country. It took a few decades to correct (then, lengthened further with the advancements in medical technology), but the laws never kept up.
And all enacted by our first Democratic socialist president who was so popular, he helped pass the constitutional amendment to limit presidential terms so that he didn’t have to serve a fourth time…
… polio is a real motherfucker. Thankfully, he was one of the last generation to ever suffer from it in their developed world.
Actually experts believed FDR had GBS, instead of polio. Which is Guillian barre syndrome. Which cause flaccid paralysis. It often occurs after severe viral and some bacterial infection, it was mostly known to European doctors and. Not a widespread diagnosis in the us