Outstanding summary of some very good results towards reducing administrative burden in government. As you wrote "Social Security’s retirement program is one of the best examples of this very point. It is our least burdensome social welfare program." Having spent my professional career as an academic specializing in Federal tax law (PhD accounting) and as an associate dean in a business school I spent this career immersed in administrative burden, governmental and private. When I retired at age 69 and went to sign up for Social Security I was so very pleasantly surprised to find out how relatively easy it was. The process was also fairly quick. I had to talk to a representative twice, and these were both short conversations with a representative who was knowledgable and efficient. I'm on the autism spectrum and very introverted and I hate having to talk on the phone but both conversations went so well, and I understood why each one was necessary, that I did not have any objections. I've also found the SS website easy to navigate and quite helpful. I will add that I'm fairly vanilla and haven't had any problems with SS either before or after retirement; I never had a problem with employers reporting my earnings and never had any issues with identity theft. I did change my last name twice due to marriages, and then went back to my maiden name, but that's a fairly common occurrence. It's so nice when such a large government agency can work so well.
Outstanding summary of some very good results towards reducing administrative burden in government. As you wrote "Social Security’s retirement program is one of the best examples of this very point. It is our least burdensome social welfare program." Having spent my professional career as an academic specializing in Federal tax law (PhD accounting) and as an associate dean in a business school I spent this career immersed in administrative burden, governmental and private. When I retired at age 69 and went to sign up for Social Security I was so very pleasantly surprised to find out how relatively easy it was. The process was also fairly quick. I had to talk to a representative twice, and these were both short conversations with a representative who was knowledgable and efficient. I'm on the autism spectrum and very introverted and I hate having to talk on the phone but both conversations went so well, and I understood why each one was necessary, that I did not have any objections. I've also found the SS website easy to navigate and quite helpful. I will add that I'm fairly vanilla and haven't had any problems with SS either before or after retirement; I never had a problem with employers reporting my earnings and never had any issues with identity theft. I did change my last name twice due to marriages, and then went back to my maiden name, but that's a fairly common occurrence. It's so nice when such a large government agency can work so well.