When your column is headlined “It’s the Elderly, Stupid,” I guess readers should know what to expect. Robert Samuelson delivers in today‘s Washington Post (a column that will appear elsewhere around the country, unfortunately), in a nasty diatribe about the kind of debt debate he thinks the country should be having–one that blames older people:
Older Americans do not intend to ruin America, but as a group, that’s what they’re about. On average, the federal government supports each American 65 and over by about $26,000 a year (about $14,000 through Social Security, $12,000 through Medicare). At 65, the average American will live almost 20 more years. Should these sizable annual subsidies begin later and be less for some? It’s hard to discuss the budget realistically if you ignore most of what the budget does.
The Social Security money they’re stealing is theirs, of course–taken out of their paychecks over their entire working lives. What Samuelson is proposing–if he really wants to discuss the budget realistically–is that they should get less of their money back in order to maintain tax cuts for the rich.
Medicare is different, in large part because healthcare costs really have increased dramatically. That’s someone’s fault–apparently old people’s.
Samuelson goes on to writes about the “contradiction” between people’s desire to do something about deficits and their belief that Social Security and Medicare shouldn’t be cut. Which isn’t a contradiction at all; people support reducing spending in other areas, like the military, and raising revenues via tax hikes on the wealthy. But here’s his case:
What sustains these contradictions is a mythology holding that, once people hit 65, most become poor. This justifies political dogma among Democrats that resists Social Security or Medicare cuts of even one dollar.
But the premise is wrong. True, some elderly live hand-to-mouth; many more are comfortable, and some are wealthy. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports the following for Medicare beneficiaries in 2010: 25 percent had savings and retirement accounts averaging $207,000 or more; among homeowners (four-fifths of those 65 and older), three-quarters had equity in their houses averaging $132,000; about 25 percent had incomes exceeding $47,000 (that’s for individuals, and couples would be higher).
So to say “most” old people are poor is wrong–and to prove that, he shows that some older people aren’t poor at all.
Go to the Kaiser report he’s citing, and you get a very different impression.
From the key findings:
–Half of all Medicare beneficiaries had incomes below $22,000 in 2010; less than 1 percent had incomes over $250,000.
–Half of all Medicare beneficiaries have less than $2,100 in retirement account savings (such as IRAs), and half of all Medicare beneficiaries have less than $31,000 in other financial assets (such as savings accounts)
But why focus on the average Medicare recipient when you can isolate the wealthiest and decry all seniors for their plan to “ruin America”? What Samuelson is saying that “we need to recognize that federal retiree programs often represent middle-class welfare.” What he actually seems to be saying is that there is inequality–rich people are getting richer. There are ways to redistribute that wealth in order to pay for everyone’s healthcare. But something tells me that’s not what he’s advocating.
ss,dd from samuelson….all he cares about is ending social security and medicare…so none of today’s cherrypicking data is new news
“The Social Security money they’re stealing is theirs, of course–taken out of their paychecks over their entire working lives.”
Peter, thank you so-o-o much for that oft-ignored truth! I will be 55 on Sunday, and have gotten a paycheck – emblazoned with that big ole FICA section – since I was 14. Listening to these fools talk about “cutting” my hard-earned money, over all those years makes me simply apoplectic!
My mother, having worked for “the government” for well over 40 years, retired early at 62 – and died at 65. When I called (as executrix of her “estate”) about all that money she’d faithfully saved through her “federal retiree pension plan,” I was told she’d already used it up – in 3 years! Try as I might for more than 10 years, I could never get a straight answer from any of the people “in the goverment.”
I say all that to say, they have been skimming – nay, STEALING – from “old people” in more ways than one, for a very long time. And if Samuelson, et al have their way, the pillaging will continue!
Great piece!
I guess he forgot to notice that for the last 30 years, the wealthy have been getting their taxes cut time and time again. But instead of saying that not only have the wealthy been getting wealthier for 30 years, but their tax burden has fallen too so they should ‘sacrifice’ (as if it would even be one) instead of Seniors that are just scraping by.
Also, it’s a total canard to blame older Americans for being selfish and getting more than their share (or blaming it on the entire boomer generation) because the ones that stole more than their share work on Wall Street or run large banks. The boomers are simply the younger generations parents and grandparents, nothing more or less. And growing older is no crime.
Well, I don’t think it’s the old people, I think it’s the worthless useless people who have been collecting welfare, or on “disability”, living in section 8 housing, all the time not even looking for a job because their rent would go up. Getting food stamps and all sorts of free stuff. I don’t have a problem with that if they truly are disabled or incapacitated in some way. But there are way too many who aren’t but they still collect. Seriously, I don’t have a big screen tv and I work my butt off, pay my taxes and I’ve been to these housing places where everyones got a big screen, they leave the door open in the winter, (because it’s so hot in there), but they don’t care because I and many others who are paying taxes are paying their bills for them. We could save a ton of money by getting everyone off the dole and give them a job. Where would the jobs come from? Well about 12 million jobs or so are being done by illegals. Send them home and get someone from here a job so they could pay taxes. I think that would clear things up quite a bit.
What I think ed is trying to say here, is that we shouldn’t be blaming old people; we should be blaming black people and mexicans. I am pretty sure all welfare queens and drug dealers are black, right? Oh and of course those mexicans (or whatever those brown people are called from south-of-the-border), stealing all of our plush American service industry jobs…
And the elephant in the room? It’s the war, stupid.
This is going to come as shock to you Ed, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Those good jobs were shipped overseas not by Mexicans, but by the greedy Corporatist who you somehow over-looked in your screed (exactly as they hoped–and planned–you would). These “housing places” you’ve been to, where everyone lives the good life on the public dole (they all have big screen teevees, and you don’t!); how do you knw that everybody there is on the dole? How do you know that none of them are deserving of this ungodly amount of money that the government gives them? You remind me of the rueful teachers and other union workers in Wisconsin, who, in their ignorance, voted in a Republicon dedicated to the destruction of their unions, their jobs, their way of life. I’ll bet a lot of them used to rail on about the lazy motherfuckers in welfare palace-apartments with their big teevees and their free-loadin’ life-styles too. A teacher’s union steward in Wisconsin reported that a whole hell of a lot of her constituents told her they voted for Walker. Why? Probably, among other things, Walker talked the get-tough on the free-loaders talk, and this is usually enough to sway low-information folks to vote against their best interests (Best interests? Hell, their basic life interests).
So, ed, my advice to you is to actually get acquainted with some of those folks you condemn out of hand. You might be surprised at what you find out. Thomas Jefferson warned us a long tome ago that we need to be able to tell the difference between our friends and our enemies. Get started on that. Think of it as a civics lesson. Who’s your enemy? The black woman who’s got a big teevee in her (maybe) subsidised apartment, or the sociopathic CEO whose well funded think tank works ’round the clock generating preposterous, revolting arguments in favor of destroying both you and the welfare mothers? Arguments that are then put into action by sick nincompoops and toadies like Walker and the Chamber of Commerce?
‘Voting against their own interests’ comment by timn reminds me of how white sharecroppers in the 1860s were convinced that they had more in common with white landowners than black sharecroppers and slaves. Round-the-clock thought-smithing… One of the things that bothers me about government waist related to medical costs is how we the people fund tons of research for drug development through the NIH then, by some bizarre law, happily hand over all the patents to large pharm companies who make wild claims about how their r&d teams made great strides in medical science and therefore deserve to profit even more wildly. Can’t we allow our funded science to work for the benefit of the people who funded it and reduce costs for all? Are we condemned to continue to give away our collective wealth forever out of sheer unfaltering ignorance? Or is it an arrogance of the type ed’s comments reflect that our government can do no wrong, if we would only get out of the way and just let them do their work, and is surely doing all that they do in our best interests?
I love the way words like redistribution and taxtherich(one word)always and forever crop up like scum rising to the top of every liberal soup.As if anyone with half a brain actually believe this is the way to fund fund fund every entitlement.Actually to fund everything under the sun.Certainly liberals believe this banal fairy tale.A lot of folks on these blogs argue that social security is well funded. Indicating a good job by government. Actually it is a broke ponzi scheme. And government has robbed it blind .All funding has jumped beyond us and passed to our childrens childrens backs.
We are coming to a point where we must force our government to admit what they believe is those things important enough to pay for.Ed above wrote in frustration against those who pay no taxes and yet use resources.It is worse than the simple sadness of the government dole.Of an entire culture that has developed around government assistance, and the demand for those who do produce, to pay ever more for it.Obama indicated last week that 8o million government checks may be held up if Congress did not get off it’s ass.That is about one in five Americans!And that correlates with 1 in 5 being out of work.So the rich must be forced to give healthcare to those who work for them…….and in essence for those who don’t?Support those who support them AND those who dont?Can you say non sustainable?
Deb, you and Peter Hart are absolutely NOT correct that “the Social Security money they’re stealing is theirs, of course–taken out of their paychecks over their entire working lives.” Were that the case, it would be impossible for the Social Security Trust Fund to go upside down, as it has. We could see how upside down it is if we required it to make the same report that private pension funds have to make. It is trillions of dollars upside down.
The US courts have clearly stated the reality of the social security system: It is a tax on the working to pay for benefits for those who qualify. And some of those have never worked.
And what I have written is even truer for medicare.
Now whether or not this has anything to do with the current spending contratemps is another thing entirely. It has NOTHING to do with the CURRENT spending fight and Samuelson is not saying that it does. He is saying that the current argument is less important than a discussion of what will happen just a few years down the road. And he is absolutely correct.
As for Peter Hart, I don’t have the slightest idea who he is but I do know that he is as wrong-headed as the politicians in Washington. This is clearly shown by his use of the wording “stealing” to characterize what Samuelson wrote. Of course, Samuelson NEVER used the word nor did he write ANYTHING that could be accurately characterized that way.
So much for “Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting.”
For the record, my parents and my in-laws were all “notch” babies and I am 64 years old–one the first who will have to work beyond 65 to receive “full” benefits. I have been self-employed for over 30 years and I work 60, 70, 80 hours and more producing, distributing and retailing local, healthy food. I fully intend to continue working more than an FTE and NOT collecting Social Security until I’m 70. And, after waiting that long, if they cut my benefits to make the system sane, I won’t complain.
First of all, I think Samuelson was actually questioning the political intransigence of many senior citizens and especially that of the AARP. I think Samuelson’s article was indelicate, but I think his larger point has merit.
I am more concerned with Peter Hart’s claim that today’s recipients are simply getting what was collected out of their paychecks. In reality, both the rate and the cap have changed dramatically since 1970. Back then, the FICA rate was 9.6% and it was applied to income up to $7800 ($43,500 in today’s dollars); today it’s 15.2% applied to income up to $106,800. If you factor in increasing retirement horizons, a shrinking workforce (relative to retirees), and advances in geriatric medicine, this notion that someone is simply getting what they paid demands proof. The AARP has advocated raising FICA rates and/or eliminating the income cap to help fund social security. This doesn’t square with the notion that you get back what you pay in. Someone isn’t getting their money back.
I started receiving literature from the AARP last year. It goes straight to the shredder. I hope I have the courage to keep doing so once I retire. Personally, I’d like to leave something for my kids and grandkids instead of asking them for a blank check while yammering on and on about how it’s my hard-earned money and I’m owed it. I think that was Samuelson’s point.
You’re right, Doug: It is the war–it’s not even mentioned by the President in his run-up to slashing Social Security.
Well, Harry, you’re a saint, willing to give it all up for “sanity” and all, but Mr. Hart is right, and you are wrong. Get the book Perfectly Legal, by David Cay Johnston read it, and weep. And, anyone familiar with Mr. Samuelson’s foul and establishment-serving oeuvre knows exactly what he’s driving at. You may not know this, but one doesn’t need to spell out one’s, um, ideas exactly to get across a point.
Well, my God, John S., of course some people aren’t going to get their money back. That’s like Dubya and other reactionaries demanding that the taxes you pay are still, somehow, “your money,” after you’ve paid them, and returning them to you is the thing to do. (Just another way to get us all on-board for massive tax breaks for the rich–exactly what happened, as planned.) Scrap the cap, raise benefits, and well, by God, some people will get more than their “fair share,” but the benefits, both for the vast majority of citizens and our culture and democracy will be very good, indeed.
Don’t worry about my ham-handed socialist dreams though (shared by so many!): we are clearly headed in the opposite direction, and political martinets like Samuelson are clearly winning the argument. My question is, what exactly will it take to get the vast majority of Americans (including Samuelson, and maybe even Newt Gingrich and the Koch brothers and President Obama) to realize things have been taken Too Far? Will it be old penioners dying in the streets? Starving to death in abandoned cars? Formerly middle-class yeoman workers, unemployed for decades, wrenching their backs out climbing out of dumpsters with the evening’s dinner? How about roving gangs of orphaned youths, ill-tempered and well-armed, shooting the above citizens for a few dollars or some table scraps? All this and more, coming to a former democracy you may live in right now. Perhaps sooner than we think.
Good comments all. I’ll add what I think are the basics of the matter. Jefferson envisioned a nation of farmers that could move west and add to the stock of land under the plow, and made the Louisiana Purchase. Thus, for all succeeding generations, virtually every family would own sufficient means of production to sustain itself and have Granny or Grandpa, no longer able to work, a-settin’ and a-rockin’ by the fire and getting all they wanted to eat without lifting a finger. Lincoln’s land grant program was the last gasp of this idea.
Well now 2% or less live on the land and they all live on one form of government dole or another and the agribiz corporations get the lions’ share of the loot and the small family farmers gets 5-10K a year, in most cases not enough to pay for the family’s medical insurance. Hence all the underfunded little government medical clinics serving the rural employed-but-poor.
The fact is, the great majority of the rest of us are wage slaves who will never self-fund their retirements. The wealthy and their corporations and trusts corral most of the assets for themselves. That was true when FDR created Social Security, when LBJ started Medicare, an it’s truer than ever today.
These entitlement programs represented a grand pact between gov’t. and people: You’ll lead lives of great economic insecurity as long as you work, but when you’re too old to work, you’ll get an income stream and medical care sufficient to acknowledge your innate human dignity and your membership in this commonwealth.
Samuelson and his ilk, particularly those whose salaries are paid by right-wing think tanks and Koch Bros. foundations, are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Obama agrees with Samuelson. If we’re not willing to remove Teleprompter Jesus, then you can take your whining and shove it.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/31/democrats/index.html
Again, a proposal to clip the workers who contributed mightily to the Social Security Insurance fund. Let me remind all those, who would steal this fund, that Angry Old men are more committed than any Angry young men!
Thanks Gabe. Clear and to the point. The real point.