Skippy linked to a story about the Social Security Administration closing all of its local offices by 2025. It won’t work, because their system still requires people to produce documents to cover certain circumstances.

I tried to sign up on line, and couldn’t because I had to provide proof that I was in the military during a specific time period, so I had to take my DD-214s to the local office.

I had to go to the office recently with a death certificate to prove my Mother was dead. Those death certificates are $10 apiece, and they just had to see it, so mailing it to a processing center is not my idea of a good deal. After the ongoing dispute we have with the VA over forms that were sent to them, mailing things to a central location is not something I would recommend.

They think that people will be able to access everything they need by using the Internet or a ‘1-800’ number. The major weakness of the plan is that it assumes that everyone who needs to contact Social Security has Internet access or a telephone.

I am now managing the low-income apartments that my Mother managed, and I can tell you for a fact that only half of the people in the apartments have a telephone, and only one has Internet access. The telecomms have priced their products out of the budgets of minimum wage workers. None of the people with telephones can afford to be put on hold waiting for the ‘next available’ person.

The whole time I was sitting in the waiting room at the local Social Security office their television system was telling me to use the Internet next time, which was really annoying since they directed me to the local office.

The people in Washington don’t seem to understand how limited and expensive Internet access is in this country, or how expensive phone service has become. There is no way they understand that a loaf of bread and half-gallon of milk cost an hour’s wages for too many people.