What Would Life WITHOUT S.S. Be Like? Mexico May Hold Clues!

[Up2Late]

(I don't know much about Mexico, other than the fact that they have a very wide devide between the Very Rich and the Very Poor.

Do they have a Social Security system in Mexico? This Reuters News Wire story make me think that the answer is NO.)

Retirement Home Prepared for Prostitutes

Thu Mar 17, 2005 10:10 AM ET

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Distressed to find aging homeless women still working as prostitutes in downtown Mexico City, women's' groups are preparing a roomy retirement home to take 65 of them off the streets.

Rejected by their families and stripped of much of their earnings by policemen and pimps, the elderly sex workers say they have no choice but to keep working, sometimes for less than $2 a day or just a plate of food.

"I may have two or three clients a day but I can't charge what the young ones do. Sometimes I just ask for food or a hotel room," said Gloria Maria, a kindly faced woman of 74 who mostly sleeps outdoors in a grimy downtown food market.

Funds raised this week will go toward fixing the roof of a an elegant but crumbling 18th century building donated by the Mexico City government to serve as a retirement home for Gloria Maria and others. Like many of her co-workers, Gloria Maria was raped as a teen-ager and fell into prostitution soon afterward.

(more at link)

<http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=7934191&src=rss/oddlyEnoughNews>

[eallen]

1. In US, working for cash under the table won't get you social security.

To receive social security, you have to have some minimum number of years (twenty?) of wages on which FICA has been paid. If you work your whole life in the gray market -- selling drugs, prostitution, day labor, or any job that pays untaxed cash -- you won't qualify. There are quite a few people who work as maids or who otherwise labor for individuals on a cash basis, who think they are smart because their wage isn't reported. They might think differently when they find out there is nothing for them when they reach 65 or 70.

I don't know the situation in Mexico. But don't assume that this is a situation that doesn't occur in the US.

[Up2Late]

2. I'm Sorry, I guess this Post was too vague as you, and looks like...

...most everyone else here, misunderstood what I meant.

What I MEANT to imply was, Without Social Security,

and with Falling Wages,

which leaves little or NO way to "Save" for retirement (for Poor People), many Old Men and Women will end up Out on the Street,

leaving Hustling and Prostitution as some of our last, or maybe only, option for our "retirement years."

Maybe I'm a hopeless Pessimist, or just one of the first to face up to the coming reality, if things don't change soon.:evilfrown: