My experience with the IRS this afternoon.

[gratuitous]

7. My wife retired recently

She needed some help with Social Security and all that stuff that I'll be doing a couple of years from now. The person she spoke with was knowledgeable, helpful, and informative. Mrs. gratuitous was flabbergasted by the end of the call. Everything was so easy!

We've been conditioned by Republicans to think that government can't do anything right (and business can do no wrong). Social Security won't be there when you retire, sink all your savings into stonks. Surely you can buy and sell commodities better than financial professionals! It's all just a guessing game and a crap shoot anyway. And it would be really low of the hustlers and the cheats to take advantage of people on the brink of retirement and con them into giving away what they've saved, so you know that won't happen.

President Biden's doing a good job of opposing that narrative, but Republicans have been running this con for more than 40 years. It will take some time, but we should push back on their narrative.