Franklin D. signs Social Security into law
Short post this am, I’m off to another TC.
Social Security “reform” is back in the news. We always knew that Medicare needed a major overhaul but Social Security was supposed to be safe- as long as the economy kept growing. Ah, there’s the rub. During recessions, economies do not grow. Now, in the past, recessions weren’t very long lasting and things righted themselves soon enough. But *this* recession is different. In this recession, we have given away the store to the bankers, literally, and have them hobbling along on their zombie bandaged feet, arms outstretched to consume whatever’s left. In spite of all the money we’ve dumped on them, they are still wildly undercapitalized. And they’re going to hold onto their toxic assets while they gamble for ressurection with the money we gave them. In other words, the recession is going to be long, painful and Japanese. There are going to be a lot of people out of work, for longer periods of time and contributions to the social security trust fund are going to diminish proportionally.
We could have shortened the pain but we have Obama and he and his droogs at Treasury are determined to save the bankers from the endangered species list at the expense of the rest of us. Reform, if it comes at all, will be too little, too late. So, here we are, looking a reduced Social Security trust fund, a much smaller piece of the pie that we will have to divide amongst ourselves. And there will be many more people who will be relying on it this time, thanks to the bankers and stock brokers who gambled away our retirement money.
Judging from my mom’s reaction to the perceived fate of Social Security, I wouldn’t expect any help from the older generation. They got theirs, they pity you but not enough to want to help you at their own expense. Expect the administration to “divide and conquer”. There will be some age cutoff where you will be sitting pretty to receive what you put into the system. People like yours truly will miss that cutoff, just like everything else people my age missed like income averaging and car loan deductions on our income taxes and generous Pell grants. We will be expected to provide for ourselves using the markets for returns, which will be extremely risky and will undoubtably be accompanied by generous fees for the money managers.
I can hardly wait.
Filed under: Economy | Tagged: FDR, recession, Social Security |
The Confluence 
I’m off to another TC
There’s another The Confluence?
Teleconference?
Not everyone is as full of doom and gloom as you are, riverdaughter. This article from Mother Jones takes a decidedly different view. It is entitled How Social Security Can Save Us All.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/05/security-blanket-how-social-security-can-save-us-all
They need to take the rose colored glasses off. Increasing benefits at this point is only going to bankrupt the funds that much faster.
They are projecting shortfalls in Medicare THIS YEAR. The time to fix it was yesterday. (Might I say how swell it is that now the medical community has decided that it has the ability to control costs and doesn’t want the government doing so for them……..Hello? Is there a reason you weren’t doing so before? Oh that’s right your a bunch of FOR PROFIT entities entitled to suck the life blood of the constituency you were created to serve. Yeah, it’d be real smart for me to trust that you all will “control costs” and not look to rape and pillage for profit any longer. NOT)
But, but, but…I thought Obama was going to save us all?
i thought thats what he said too..save the world.
I surely hope that not all of the “older” generation is so indifferent about Social Security for younger generations. I worry all the time about my children’s future given the economic blindness that is being thrust upon us. They are being hurt badly by this downturn — one with a great education and experience is suffering from a long-term layoff — and desperately trying to find work. Meanwhile, that results not only in current insecurity but in future income, along with losses of health care coverage. We are trying to do everything we can possibly do to help, drastically cutting our own budget. I would hope, and expect, that to be true of many, many families.
It will be interesting to see which side they try to butter up in thier effort to divide and conquer….I’m betting this time, they will appeal to the younger works to ditch grandma . It would fit in with the whole obot mind set.
Obama trained his early supporters (at camp Obama)to promote the generational war. His recruiters were convinced that their parents and grandparents had already drained the national treasury and were standing in the way of their perfect future.
It was ugly and I was astonished at what I was being told by the young Obots. It was out and out lies but they were true believers and I watched as they convinced many others of their generation (18-35) of the selfishness of the over 50 crowd.
So, you are right – ditching mom and dad and the grandparents is what they are all about.
Here’s the funny part. Obots will ditch mom and dad as they have been trained to do…then they will want to know what’s for dinner .
No, we (I am now receiving SS) are hardly indifferent….in many states a majority of us voted for HRC!
During the primary that was one of my main talking points against Obama…not that it did much good. My view was that he was telegraphing his right center views loud and clear but that Obots weren’t listening. Like it took Republican Nixon to go to China it was going to take a Democrat (or really really clever DINO) to screw up Social Security and Medicare.
It gives me no pleasure to see the very crowd which was so passionate involved in electing this candidate will pay the price of their unquestioning loyalty for many years to come.
Expect the administration to “divide and conquer”.
Certainly that’s what Bush and the media tried to do….in 8 years, his only major push back happened when he tried to F with the checks. The Dem signaled they would do nothing but ring thier hands before caving in , per usually ,…it was the public that said, hell no. Every time Baby Bush opened his mouth during that selling tour, the” hell, no! ” got bigger .
I remember the woman who told him she worked three jobs to pay for health care and Bush smiled and said that’s great! What a great America story! His attitude was she’s showing great American pluck and daring do. The elite love stories of working class pluck.
Basically we are in the same boat as we were in 2006. A Dem congress and a media that are forever bowing before a Republican president .
The only difference now is Hillary . That’s the bright spot. If anyone else was SOS, that woman reporter would rot in an Iranian jail. I can’t see anyone else bestirring themselves about it ….and that’s a small example.
During the primary, the media kept howling, ” why doesn’t she just stop??” It was a mystery to them because they knew Barry would be installed regardless of anything….well Hillary didn’t stop because other wise she’d be political road kill like the other Dem big wigs , and would not be in the position she is in now….where she can help.
Hillary also did not stop because she respected the process too much….you know, where the voters matter? No wonder the media couldn’t figure that out .
What is it you want older people to do exactly? And saying that “we” got ours as if we were some kind of greedy old vampires sucking the life out of the young isn’t helpful.
I thought that was the Obot way.
Indeed. It was the older and wiser generation who didn’t fall for Bush kabuki on this in ’05 and why there was a push back . He sweeten thier pot , but they said no thanks…because they knew him and cared for thier children. This round , I’m guess it’s the kids who will be appealed to….
there’s always the ice floes
lol! except with global warming, they are shrinking too!
I hear you KenoshaMarge and agree. What in the world are, the “older” ones to do? Not take our money? How will that help? We are worried about our children, too. I took my check early this year when I turned 62 – I know it won’t be there when I turn 66, the new “retirement age.” This cuts my check in HALF. I have health problems; younger people generally (i said generally) are healthier than older people, too. My husband, a computer consultant, is out of work; God knows how long that will go on.
So, I say the same thing to RD: What is it you want older people to do? We are trying to survive too. Try looking for a job in your 60’s ; ain’t as easy as when you were in your 40’s!
Kenoshamarge:
I share your sentiments.
Ever since reading this piece earlier this morning I’ve wondered exactly how the “older generation” is suppose to help save SS. The hardest hit group in the economic meltdown were first generation baby boomers, who don’t have a large enough window of opportunity to regain their losses and Seniors already on SS. I know quite a few people whose retirement savings have been torn asunder and whose monthly SS checks are their lifeline to make ends meet. I know people whose only income is SS, I’m sure there are folks collecting SS who could do just fine without it, but that would suggest means testing, which I’ve long suspected is the goal of Barack and friends. If that’s the case Joe Biden needs to get off of SS immediately. I paid into SS for 47 years and because of the gender income disparities that existed throughout my entire working life, and still exists today, although to a lesser degree, my SS, is by today’s standards, a pentence. I have nothing to give back!! Now I’m willing to stand arm in arm with younger citizens in the fight to save it, my biggest worry is not that we’ll desert them, but that they’ll desert us.
I agree. There was, and is, a very strong anti boomer generation (or anyone older than 50) sentiment by the Obot crowd. A desire to blame everyone over 50 for all the ills of this time.
I can’t say I know exactly what RD meant, but it’s possible she meant that from her mother’s response she gathered that any decrease in benefits to current retirees would be fought with the full warth of the armies of AARP. Is it feasible for there to be any decrease in benefits? Perhaps not for each of you responding here as individuals, but as a whole?
I am at the tail end of the baby-boomers. I also missed out on many of the benefits RD mentioned, and fully expect to miss out on any future SS benefits despite years of paying in. I also missed out on many of the changes in child ssupport laws that wuold have benefitted me when I was a single mom. And yet I still seem to get the full benefit of the scorn of the younger generation.
Hear hear. I am smack in the middle of Gen-X and have had many of the fun experiences sleepingdogs describes. With the added fun and games of my local family court’s backlash against moms (YMMV depending on your area of the country) that has bled me of pretty much every dime that Sallie Mae didn’t get.
I am retired and working part time and helping my children who have lost their jobs. I do what I can. The younger generation will have it harder to find jobs but a lot of them did not help themselves by falling for backtrack’s bs.
They took color over country. All generations will pay for that error. By getting rid of the so called middle class in this country , what can the younger generations aspire to? Very few will become rich and most will work to exist not to have a good life.
Look at the subtle way health care in being changed to say too much money spent on older people takes away from what we can spend on younger people’s health. Soon it will be food and water used to divide. Soylent Green anyone?
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE, MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
Your mother is an Armageddon believer. They’ve been expecting the world to end within the next two years for at least the past 25.
Then, according to their beliefs, all the right and honest people will have the world to themselves, and live in pleasant detached homes with gardens.
(The other denizens of the earth will vanish in God’s wrath).
Think instead about what your father’s attitude would have been to all this.
I figure the retirement age will be 70 anytime now.
Regan already built that into Social Security, it moves that direction by law now.
Yeah, but the fact is that people live a whole lot longer now than when the retirement age of 65 was introduced. I don’t know what actuaries set life expectancies at for someone currently 50, but I’m sure it’s got to be a whole lot more than it was a few decades back.
This is actually a falacy. The median life expectancy of an American is 83 and has been for a couple of decades.
Huh?
Most recent HHS data has life expectancy at 77.8 (80.4 for women, 75.2 for men)? According to their data, life expectancy at birth has gone up two years in the last decade, and seven years since 1970.
I didn’t have a single grandparent live beyond their 60’s. At just 60 my mother has had 2 heart attacks and a 2 strokes. My natural father is already deceased. What do you figure the odds are that genetically speaking I will live to collect a single cent from social security?
If it was not for SS I would be in the “poor house” and to give you an idea as to how old I am, I am what is called a “Notch”” child as I was born in 1927 and certain numbers of my years have been excluded and I receive several hundreds of dollar less, then some born after me and worked less years. The younger generation (most not all). have no idea of how it was to survive and try to get ahead when born in the great depression and and coming of age of work and military service during the second world war years. My own son drank the kool aid and to this date still believes and can not even explain to me Obama’s health care plan.
I know so many people like you Jessie, thanks for sharing that.
Sigh. what you say is so true. Before Social Security old people often were handed about from family to family or placed in poor houses. Doctors often gave free care, but many people also just would not go to a doctor because their pride would not allow them to take “charity.” [Come to think of it, that is happening again.]
We have come a long way since the Depression of the 1930s, mostly for the good, but we have forgotten the many painful stories of those who went through those years and then turned around and fought World War II. Some of them even went back, not by choice, to fight in Korea.
Their children fought in Vietnam — and some grandchildren in the more recent wars.
My parents gave everything they had to help any of the children in the family through hard times and we in turn did as much as we could for them.
I was appalled at the selfishness and the misinformation being spread by Obama supporters in his campaign. He created so many divisions — between young and old and between men and women and between races. That is not the kind of “leadership” we need in solving our domestic and global problems.
I firmly believe we can solve the problems of social insurance in this country without causing inter-generational warfare or massive suffering (that is, if Obama gets his head on straight).
Interesting how all of a sudden this has come up. Post the 401k thing. Perhaps if jobs had not been outsourced and the government had had its thinking cap on they would have realized what was going on.
Me sorry….couldn’t help it.
Those of us of a certain age receive an annual mailing from the Social Security Administration. It shows exactly how much money I have paid into the system as a result of my labor over 49 years.
I would like a lump sum pay out.
Hell, I don’t even care if they pay me any interest. I would just take a check for the entire amount and you will never hear from me again.
From looking at the report SS has been a poor investment for me.
Same here
I could have used the money to pay off our housing and our transportation which might actually help us in our old age. Unfortunately Uncle Sam has been too busy using the surpluses to buy bright shiny objects and the means to blow up the world twice over so I will likely be screwed if forced to rely on Social Security.
Same story here.
I’ve been paying into the system for over two decades but never expected to get much of anything in return. So it goes. Now that my 401(k) has been vaporized, I’m expecting to work well past 70.
Like some phrase you can’t get out of your head, all I can think is: Trillions for killing people? No problem. Trillions for bankers? We can do that in a couple of hours. Health care? Medicare? Social Security? What ARE you thinking? We can’t afford that.
Of course it would help if those old geezers gave up their benefits. That’s the only solution. There’s no money anywhere else. Nope. Nosirree. Definitely not. Don’t keep looking at those wars and those bankers. That’s totally different.
Exactly. On the news the other day, they said in disappoving tones , the post office is 2 billion in debt! Horrors! Well hecks , that’s the moring coffee cart budget on Wall St..
How much you wanna bet that once they decrease services there that business figures out a way to capitalize on it.
I already get a fee from Comcast to pay my cable on the phone or to pay my cell bill with cash at Verizon in their stores. Progressive on top of asking for an installment fee(industry standard for most part) was going to charge another $5 if I didn’t allow them to auto debit it from our bank account. we got rid of them as a result). The list goes on and on.
what quixote said! double down on it.
What’d I say? I’m in moderation.