Name: Social Security Cards Explained
Uploaded: 2017-06-01T12:35:12.000Z
Duration: 7 min 49 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

a nation of pioneers living out from under the eye of government ...

As such, unlike many other countries, Americans don't have a national ID card...

...and even the idea of creating one is a political hot topic every election cycle.

The results are always the same: we don't need no ID card.

But suspiciously, US citizens do already have this:

a card with a unique number that many places will ask for to prove who you are.

This is the Social Security card and number...

...and it has become a quasi ID / unique password to identify citizens...

...though that was never its intended use.

For Americans, keeping this number secret is super important...

because it's the key to the government and banks to identifying you as you...

… and losing control of it is the worst kind of identity theft that can happen.

So how did Americans end up with a national ID number…

… that isn't one and a card terribly unfit to identify?

It all started in the great depression of long long ago…

… when the government created the social security program, …

Citizens would be required to pay in during…

… their working lives and withdraw in their retirement.

The idea being that even if past-you didn't save…

… for the sunset years of future-you, the eventually old current you…

… would still have something to live on.

Now if you want to think of social security as a benefit…

… the government provides or as a bank account that's yours …

… is… controversial, but either way this number was created …

… to track what you put in and what you take out.

Now, because this was just one government program…

related only to your working life, you only needed to apply…

…for a social security card when you actually started working.

But over time, that changed and the younger you are,

…the more likely you've had one from the moment of your birth…

…despite babies' worthlessness as child laborers.

Well it goes back to Americans' having no national identity card…

…with a national number, which makes it harder for institutions…

… to keep track of people over their lives.

people move, people marry, people change names.

And if you're trying to keep track of everyone,

as say the United States Tax department might want to do,

it can be a real problem, particularly in the pre-computer days.

"Hey, wait a minute, look, at *this* number just lying around,"

"It's not supposed to be used as an ID number,"

"There are security reasons you shouldn't--"

Thus the tax department piggy-backed off of the work

the social security department did assigning working adults a number,

… and they highly encouraged parents to get a social security number…

… for their children by tying it to a tax discount.

Crazily, counting children for tax rebates used to run on the honor system.

1. We will give you a discount on your taxes for each child you have.  And:

2. Write down your number of children, …

…please be honest, we don't have a way to check.

Which was just asking, nay, begging people to lie.

Which they did, birthing on paper millions of phantom children.

But after requiring each kid to have a social security…

… account number connected to a birth certificate…

… before the parents could get the tax discount, …

This turned the social security number into a unique number…

… that all citizens had right from the start, …

and that made it easy for lots of other places like banks …

... and schools and companies and landlords …

… to also piggy back on the number as an easy way…

… to keep track of people without having to come up…

… with their own systems and to be able to exchange information…

This is super useful for institutions, so, …

…the desire of Americans to not have a national identity card led, …

…to the nearest thing available being used as a substitute…

… which ended up being worse because the social security number…

… was never designed to be used this way in the long, long ago.

And you can tell because it has no security built into it.

Ok, so there's this neat trick that most ID numbers use…

...where they can check themselves to see if they're invalid.

The simplest way is to have the last couple digits…

All kinds of ID cards and bar codes do this because it makes it impossible…

… to enter an incorrect number in a computer, …

… and makes it harder for fraudsters to guess valid numbers.

This is why if you try to buy something online by guessing…

… a credit card number, the website knows it's invalid…

But because the Social Security number started life…

… in the long, long ago, it's just a number…

… with no self-checking security built in.

Worse, if you're born pre-2011 it's not that hard to just guess …

…most of the number: the first three digits are the state where the …

parents applied for the card and the last four digits just count up in order, …

… and the middle digits follow a regular pattern.

So you can take your number, subtract one and that's a valid number…

… of someone who was probably born in the same hospital…

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Social Security Cards Explained

weird

eventually

inevitably

track