Did he...just disappear??? 😐🫥
Can someone explain what this is? Do Americans have documents proving you exist?
It's a soggy piece of cardboard that "they" give you at birth and you have to hold onto it with your tiny baby hand, and then you have to keep it until you're like 90 years old. If this soggy, easy to lose or destroy card gets lost or destroyed you have to prove to the magically animated statue of Abraham Lincoln himself that you're American to get a replacement.
This card is explicitly not an ID card, but the only thing it ever gets used for is as an ID card.
Yea we do. Social security number card. You use those, a birth certificate, drivers license, and two pieces of reputable mail (for proof of existence and address) to do most big ticket purchases or verify yourself before cars, houses, clearances, update drivers license. Etc...etc...
Looks like that piece of paper containing an American's social security number
If he was fully committed to the bit, he wouldn't have hidden his SSN from this picture.
He's going off the grid! This guy doesn't have a social security number for Roy!
Ripping up the social security card doesn't actually remove the number from the system, so the sovereign citizen accomplished nothing.
I declared it!
There must be a way to get a replacement, right?
Anyway, what's even the point of SSN? European asking.
Very easy to get a replacement, as far as things go. I'll assume the office doesn't require an appointment (it did during covid). Just go in, wait, talk to a clerk, explain either you never had one or lost it (I think there's a higher charge for losing it over never having had one), pay a reasonable fee, get new card mailed to you. Out of several government things I've had to do, getting a card was simple.
Easy if you got other documents. My friend lost everything in a fire years ago and getting new SS card and ID were hell and took months because he couldn't prove he was who he said he was. All his tax records, old mail, everything was gone and he had a very hard time convincing the government of his identity.
identification for like taxes and whatnot
what do y'all have over there?
Here is Germany it’s a bit more complicated:
We have a tax id that never changes and is assigned to every person at birth. It’s used for tax purposes. There was some opposition against it due to the centralized and permanent nature, so politicians are careful not to openly use it for other purposes. Behind the scenes it is on the way to become a universal id number for most government databases.
Then there is the tax number, which contains a number of the tax office in your region, so if you move you get a new one. Businesses also get them. This was the old system, which is still in use today.
Health insurance and pension have their own number schemes.
For identification with private parties (like banks) you use your id or passport, which have their own numbers. Owning either an id card or a passport is mandatory.
German here. We have a social security number which just serves its original purpose of identifying you for social security.
We have a tax number for taxes.
And we have a national ID card for most other purposes where you'd need to identify yourself.
It even comes with a neat feature where you can use it for online identification and it only reveals just as much information as needed (like are you over 18 or not).it was not the initial intent to be a multipurpose national id number, but it turned out to be that way because states rights and stuff
And employers prefer them for W-4 forms (which is also about taxes, granted).
It's just a form of national identification number. It's assigned at birth, and is used as a means to legally identify an individual for government purposes (taxes, benefits, acquiring licenses and other forms of identification). They exist in Europe as well, they are just called something different than SSN. Not every country uses them, though.
It's an annoying process to get one buts it's pretty easy. It's a lot of sitting and waiting in lines
There is. I had to replace mine due to a flood.
A DMV employee told me they're made of denim and very hard to tear. Is that not true then?
i know that US currency is actually a textile, not paper-- it's 25% linen and 75% cotton. not sure about social security cards, but there is precedent for using fabric and other textiles in the creation of government documents, and it's specifically to make them more durable.
I just tested it on mine and it was surprisingly easy to tear it to shreds. I don't think there's any denim in there.
It just feels like very sturdy paper. There may be denim involved in the making of it but you absolutely can easily tear them. I've had to replace one before when it got torn accidently
Mine from 1983 is just paper.
That looks remarkably fragile for something so important. Isn't your SSN also on your passport/drivers license?
Not any more.
For the longest time my home state used SSNs as drivers license numbers. I think the federal government finally told them to stop, and years ago now we all got new randomly generated numbers on our licenses instead of SSNs.
OOF
