End the Life Expectancy ‘Handouts’ and Encourage Post-Retirement Work
In 1900, the average life expectancy at birth was 49.2 years. It’s a good thing President William McKinley didn’t sign on to a Social Security-type law back then. Instead of arguing about whether 70 is the new 65, as Michelle Malkin did in a recent column, we might still be in the middle of a century-old argument about whether 55 is the new 50.
Until the 1930s, how late into life people chose to work was their own business. What many don’t fully appreciate is how determined President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the early blue-collar unions were to make it their business instead. Operating under a silly assumption that older people continuing to work were denying new workforce entrants their chance at employment, the Retirement Earnings Test in early Social Security legislation prohibited everyone age 65 and over from getting a benefit in any month during which they engaged in “regular employment.” Similarly, though their enforcement was spotty, early pension systems established by the United Auto Workers and others, even the 30-and-out arrangements enabling some UAW members to retire in their late-40s and early-50s, penalized workers on a dollar-for-dollar basis for any earnings from work after retirement.
In the ensuing decades, for better or worse, Social Security has morphed into a somewhat generous lifetime retirement entitlement. The system’s current structure is unsustainable, but salvageable. Meanwhile, unconstrained by competitive market forces and insufficiently monitored by voters, many public-sector retirement plans turned into early-retirement gravy trains. Most of them are in similar or worse peril; we will find in the next several years that many can’t be saved.
The politicians who created these systems have over a period of decades made promises they should have known could not possibly be kept. Why should they have known? Because they had every reason to anticipate that life expectancies would continue to increase.
This takes us to a critical point which, though inarguably true, may be difficult for some to handle.
Each year, as long as legislated or contractual retirement ages remain fixed while life expectancies quietly grow through improvements in safety, medicine, and manual labor-sparing technologies, the population as whole picks up a couple of tenths of a year of extended lifespan — and, as long as the laws or contracts don’t change, extended retirement. This represents a very real annual “handout.” It certainly isn’t earned; the only thing you have to do to pick up each year’s additional gift is to remain here on planet earth. One could argue about intent — was it sloth and inertia, or did the politicians realize that they would be creating an ever-growing number of beneficiaries? — but no one can dispute the accuracy of my characterization.
Presumably Chambermaids of Commerce in the immediate vicinity of Cincinnati like to hear this patter.
From farther off, I wonder why we did not hear a little more of it a few years ago when there was rather a better chance that all those slacking geezers could actually find jobs.
Happy days.
To raise the retirement age (you are talking exclusively about retirement under government payouts) is to recognize as legitimize the evil that is SS–for all practical purposes a government piggy-bank now milked dry. What purpose does this serve future generations who will see ever greater portions of their money misspent and disappeared?
Get the neo out of your con and give liberty a try.
Millions of people have been forced to make payments to SS for many years. 40+ in my case. I didn’t have a choice in the matter, and Congress spent it, and lied about doing so. Now I’m told I’ll have to wait longer? BS. Where’s my f*ckin’ money? I’m not asking for a free ride, but if the terms of the “agreement” are to be changed, give me back my “investment”, plus interest.
This notion is political suicide.
You know that if all you get back is “your money”, you’ll make about %1.5 annual return and see about 1/3rd of what they said you’d get?
Heh. I don’t really expect a buyout. But at least I would get to determine how my money was used.
Cris;
It isn’t your money. Your money went to the previous generation of retirees. Any money you get as SS is taken from younger workers.
Granted, some monies have been paid out as they were intended, but Congress “borrowed” the rest. It’s just a bunch of worthless IOUs.
The concept of a verbal contract applies? Takes a lawyer to determine if the verbal commitment we were all made over the years, pay into this thing and get a pension later, is binding.
The problem is, It’s not certain I can continue to do analytical work at a competitive level until 75. My boss might say its not certain I can even do it now but thats another issue.
People in the USA were promised “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” and that only. The politician scum bags were the ones who dreamed up “retirement” and the whole boondoggle mess of entitlements in order to sell votes. We need to get back to the values of individual responsibility and not a society like today that encourages and rewards free loaders. If you cannot retire so be it. If you can retire well good for you. Of course you need now to unwind a societal mindset and a vast array of private sector thinking that also encourages people who are over 55 to look elsewhere for work. It is pervasive thinking today to get the older people out of the way so the young ones can move up. Imagine an enlightened company that actually tried to find a different path for their experienced workers to give them a softer landing say as internal consultants, advisors,and mentors. Save some consulting dollars and not throw away your valuable corporate secrets etc.
Dream on!! But count me out of more government involvement in anything.
There are at least two approaches to this “problem.”
1. If we can realistically anticipate living ever-longer healthy productive lives, something’s got to give. Ray Kurzweil posits that within the not-too-distant future it will become technically possible to extend that condition indefinitely. As the age of mortality approaches infinity, how can retirement be justified? Social Security will necessarily make the cat’s march to the ash can.
2. Assume, for the sake of argument, that Social Security is an end worthy of any sacrifice. If the only way to sustain it is for the actuarial tables to remain stable, Soylent Green must become a dietary staple. Other people’s money is a finite resource so length of retirement must cease being a variable and become a mandated constant.
“I should be able to retire at 62 or a bit later (or for many in the public sector, a bit to somewhat earlier), stop working entirely, and be able to maintain my lifestyle, regardless of whether or not I planned for retirement, and regardless of whether I’m capable of working. And if I can’t, it’s the politicians’ fault.” This is completely unacceptable, especially in the serious economic circumstances we face in the coming decade.”
Well, that is the attitude in ALL of the social-welfare states in Europe. In all of the countries in Europe that are going down the tubes financially right now, this is the mind set of the people living there, especially in Greece and the southern European countries. And how’s that working out for them? It’s not and they are all about to go under financially. So why do we have this same attitude? Why are people like Obama so anxious to copy the European model that is clearly wrong and bound for fiscal bankruptcy? Because that is the progressive way, my friends. The government will take care of you, the government will give you “free” stuff, and you will rely on the government for all of your needs. And the sooner this happens, the better (according to the Progressives).
And once you rely on the government for the basic necessities of life, then they own you. Since the government is paying for it, they can determine what health care you will get, how much of it you will get, and when people will be allowed to live and die. You will be told what schools you can go to (under student loans), what foods you can eat (under food stamps), and where you can live (public housing and government mortgage loans).
Of course, none of this stuff is “free.” Somebody has to pay for it, and it will be YOU, just like in Europe which has astronomical taxes, huge government waste, lousy employment rates, no growth, and a constant demand for more and more benefits with an ever decreasing pool of people to pay for them. Yep, sure sounds sweet to me! But THIS is the road Obama wants us to go down and this is the road that will only lead us to disaster. It must stop in 2012 by throwing this bum out of office, before what is left of this nation is lost forever, especially with Obamacare about to kick in.
Unfortunately, there are more problems than those stated. Per stats at the SS website, the disabled represent 25% of SS/Medicare beneficiaries, with no requirement to have paid into the system. Many disabled people could work if re-trained; the system was based on a population that performed manual labor.
It was also designed for a different culture, one with stable marriages with one income/family. Per the SS website, every ex-spouse of a retiree where the marriage lasted 10 years is eligible to draw concurrently with the retiree.
The simplest method of transition would be transferring responsibility for the disabled to the states, along with whatever monies they had paid into the system. It’s easier to help these people at the state and local level, including re-training. The way it is managed now, there is no real oversight, and the payments from SS are higher than most welfare payments, so this portion of the SS beneficiaries is growing rapidly.
Continue the raising of retirement eligibility upward, including early retirement, until it reaches life expectancy. This would probably be more politically possible, since this method has already raised the age to 67.
Obamacare, if the Supreme Court doesn’t stop it, will solve the problem with death panels. Once HHS takes full control of Medicare decision-making, only the very healthy will live much beyond 67.
Dear Emmaliza,
Please go to the head of the class with this succinct brief of the real problem on SS. Demographics of aging be damned. It seems to be the money leaking out of the bucket that is killing us more than failing to kick the bucket.
“Per stats at the SS website, the disabled represent 25% of SS/Medicare beneficiaries, with no requirement to have paid into the system. ”
Yes, true. I work on the other side of town, where the goal among segements of all cultures is 1) Drop out of school at the earliest possible time or just quit going; 2) Work the system until you find the doctor who can get you on SSI (roughly $770 a month; 3) Get the food stamp card (roughly $385 a month), use it for food and to trade for other stuff; 4) despise law enforcement, get a gun if ya can; 4) Start having babies, a lot and often and act like you are concerned about their welfare (welfare); 5) Act out being a thug, a victim, a person of unfortunate circumstances who has been put upon by this horrific country called America, Oh shame on thee thy name. I’ll stop. This scenario includes, male, female, white/black/not so much hispanic/no asians and others and the children get indoctrinated. It seems to be working well.
Two days ago a white (does that make me racist?) male 38 from a tough part of town, killed a Hispanic police officer 37 with three kids in the city of Kalamazoo. First one we have lost since about 1867 from what the article said. It’s a shame. We have created a very bad incentive for a lot of people.
It sounds like a movie or it should be. The perfect scam, and Clint Eastwood should make a movie about it. We all pay, all of lives into a system that takes and takes and cries the blues when it has to pay. After the leaders have spent the money, after the promises have been broken, while we defend the whole world while they retire. How about this, we all pay for school taxes, how about only if you have children, and the more you have the more you pay. Think about it, what a huge savings we could see, it would save the nation from the financial grave, after all education is just another hand out. Why should I pay to educate someone else’s children. If you can’t educate them yourself you should’nt have them, right.
As for educating other people’s children–don’t forget that, when you’re old and retired, if there’s going to be any money from Social Security coming to you, it’s coming from the income of the young people currently employed (that’s the whole point, of worrying about how many workers there are per retiree). Do you want those young people to be educated people, or failures who had inadequate schooling?
Also, when you need care as an old geezer, do you want a more-educated or less-educated person tending to your needs in the hospital or nursing home?
I hope you didn’t think that “your money” that they took out of your paycheck for Social Security was being saved up for your use, when you got around to retiring! It got paid out long ago to cover the needs of the then-current retirees.
It’s called a society: we all pay collectively for roads, schools, police, hospitals, etc. But can we pay for people to spend a couple decades of their lives in ‘retirement’, if those people don’t also undertake to save up out of their own funds, reduce their costs, etc.? The number of people one meets who feel they are going to be at last entitled to travel around and live a permanent vacation life-style is astonishing, if they’re expecting the taxpayers’ dimes to do it for them.
Naw. This has nothing to do with ‘society’…this was one giant ‘ponzi scheme’ that FDR started because he and many other politicians figured it was the perfect scam and they would never have to make good on it because people died much earlier then.
Social Security is a joke. Instead, what is ‘S/S’ should have been a much lower “poor tax” and only set-up for the poorest of the poor eldery/disabled rather than giving people a false sense of ‘security’ that they could ‘retire’ on ‘S/S’.
People have been robbed and told a lie in order to fork it over willingly.
You might want to work, and be able to work, and your company might be happy with the job you do. Laws and experience to the contrary notwithstanding, somebody is going to decide that your health is a risk, and your salary is more than they have to pay some kid out of college. Or someone in India or China.
American companies are hiring. They aren’t hiring here.
So it’s a little simplistic to believe that “keep working” is going to solve the problem. I have no plans to retire early. I just hope I can keep working and I recognize I am one of the lucky ones.
“In the ensuing decades, for better or worse, Social Security has morphed into a somewhat generous lifetime retirement entitlement.”
I refuse to allow Social Security and, yes, Medicare, to be lumped in with entitlements like Medicaid. For over 50 years I worked and paid in to Social Security and Medicare, and I continue to pay $100 per month for my Medicare. It is not a government give away — except in the cases of paying those who are too drugged to work for their own living, paying those who arrive here illegaly, and paying those who are self-sufficient, who own their own companies, or who are multi-millionaires just because they have reached the magical age of 70 or wherever it is now. I earned my “somewhat generous” lifetime retirement by God. And it is anything BUT “generous.”
Unfortunately, the US Congress and the US Supreme Court disagree! By there actions, Congress has proven they don’t care about future retirees as they have done absolutely nothing to insure the system is solvent well in to the future. By legal interpretation, the Supreme Court has found that you have no claim on the money you sent in over a lifetime of working, to the US treasury, it is simply another revenue stream to be spent as they see fit. In essence, the courts ruling says that income tax, medicaid tax and social security tax are on equal footing and can be spent as congress sees fit.
Welcome to FDR’s fabulous future!
Biloxipat;
Retirees get far more in benefits and SS than they paid in.
So yes, it is a government giveaway.
Both my wife and I have been paying in the maximum to SS for 30 years. If they up retirement to 70 that means that I will have paid in at the maximum for 50 years.
Do you really think I will get all of that money back?
Ain’t no way, no how.
With all due respect, you actually are highly likely to burn through it all!
Historical Soc Sec Tax Rates
1981 Rate was 5.35% – when you were 20 years old
2011 Rate is 6.2%
Increase of .85%
Assume 2012 Rate and later will be 6.2% + .85% = 7.05%
Assume current income is $50,000
If you’ve worked 30 years and expect to work 20 more,
assuming your income was tied to the consumer price index,
you would have earned $39,684 in 1981 when you were
20 years old and you will earn $86,289 in 2030 when your
70. Using the tax rates above and your annual CPI adjusted
income from 1981 to 2030, you would have paid a total of
$174,264 in to the Social Security Trust Fund.
Current MAXIMUM benefits are $1174 per month
Assume that the payment never goes up, (even though the
payments have gone up regularly and periodically over the
years), you would take out every dime you contributed in
12 year and 4 months. So, every month you live over the
age of 82 and a half, you are taking out $1174 that you didn’t
put in – $14,088 per year.
It is highly likely you will live to the age of 82 and a half if you
reach the age of 70.
Forget about the employer contribution and a rate of return. The employer contribution may or may not make it in to your check if they no longer had to pay it and the government not only isn’t investing contributions, they spend every dollar they take in. In fact, this year they will pay out more than they take in is Soc Sec taxes.
I’m a little older than that, not much, and the last time I was paid under $50,000 was 1984. For many of those years
Current income this year near to 150k.
2011 SS rate for self-employed is 13.3%.
Given the life expectantcy rate of males in my family, baring medical breakthough, is 65 at the outside.
I’ve just been doing some counting. Approximately 80% of the people I grew up with (including family members) never lived long enough to collect Social Security. This seems a mite high, actually a little scary. I don’t know what the actual statistic is for the percentage of working people who survive long enough to collect Social Security. All these friends and relatives contributed to Social Security through their lifetimes. Several of them died when they were passed retirement age but had continued working and never drew down their SS benefits. None of us ever felt we would live to collect what we contributed.
But we all figured that if one of us, or a few of us ever DID collect Social Security Benefits, that person or those persons would be benefiting not only from his or her OWN contributions to the SS Program, but also from the contributions of those of us who didn’t survive.
I never see reference to the contributions of our deceased friends or family members when returns on Social Security contributions are computed. What happened to all the money our lifelong buddies and girlfriends and brothers and sisters contributed before they passed away too early? Do they count for nothing?
My father-in-law worked all of his life and collected only two years worth of ‘S/S’ before he died. My mother-in-law outlived him by only a couple more years.
The idea that a lot of older folks are living large for years on social security is outright laughable.
Get rid of the fraud in a lot of these government entitlement programs first before pointing the finger at the elders.
Work later in life? Okay, fine. Some of us must, and hopefully will. But some are going to hold out for what they believe they were promised.
I’ve saved and invested lifelong. I imagine that when I retire, which I hope will be about four years hence, I won’t need SS payments to muddle along. Oh, it might affect my wife’s shoes budget, but I think we can stand that. But quite a lot of other Americans are in a different financial category. Many of them view generous SS payments as something they were promised in exchange for their payroll taxes. They are the stumbling block to Social Security reform.
There are four avenues toward reforming the scheme without terminating it:
– Raise the retirement age;
– Lower benefit payments until incoming SS payroll taxes will cover them;
– Increase the payroll tax;
– Means-test it.
Both the first two approaches will draw heavy political counterfire from the graying sector of the electorate. The third one will be fiercely resisted by anyone who’s currently employed or employs others. The fourth one reduces SS to a form of welfare, after which there would be no justification for funding it from a special, separately determined tax.
The bottom line is both simple and stark: Social Security must and will be terminated in the foreseeable future, and no one will be particularly pleased about it. But getting there will be the political fight of the century.
If we are going to employ means testing, then it should be based on lifetime earnings, not savings. I know people in both of the following catagories: those who made several times the average household income and spent it all and then some, and those who made average or less than average income (that would be me), and who made-do or did without for years in order to educate their children without debt and in order to save for retirement.
If means testing is based on money in the bank, the frugal will continue to do without while the dilettantes will be taken care of. I can’t afford to pay for their retirement, since I am already paying for their mortgages, and soon, their children’s college debt.
SocSec is already means-tested based on lifetime earnings.
The more you have made during your working career, the less of a benefit you will receive compared to your average adjusted career earnings.
In 2011, Social Security’s specific benefit formula for a person retiring at the Full Retirement Age is:
• 90% of the first $749 of AIME (Average Indexed Monthly Earnings based on the highest 35 years of inflation-adjusted earnings from work)
• 32% of the next $3,768 of AIME
• 15% of the remainder
That’s means testing. It doesn’t reduce benefits, but it tilts benefits heavily towards those with lower lifetime earnings, even though everyone paid in the same percentage of their gross pay (up to the FICA taxable limit) while they were working.
Thanks for your reply. I understand what you are saying. I think that I didn’t make myself very clear in regard to lifetime earnings. Over the past couple of years I have seen people propose the following: Those with private savings (regardless of lifetime earnings) should not receive the full social security benefit to which they are entitled, because they don’t “need” it. In other words, a social security benefit should be based on your contributions, minus a certain percentage based on the amount of your savings. A very simplistic example. Person A made $35,000.00 a year for 45 years ($1,575,000), saved and invested, and now has a substantial amount for retirement. Person B made $150,000 a year for 45 years ($6,750,000) and saved nothing. Why should Person A have his ss benefit reduced so it can be redistributed to Person B? Some people spend it along the way, and some people do without to save for a rainy day. Before this is over, the government will come after private savings, one way or another.
I see your point. I don’t think anyone is actively proposing means testing based on assets, but I too can see it coming, and yes, a lot of average folks who don’t think it through find it initially appealing.
There is already what amounts to a bit of a means test based on assets already, in the sense that you have to pay federal income tax on either 50% or 85% of your SocSec benefits, and a lot of times it’s interest, dividends, and retirement distributions which push a person over the related income thresholds.
There’s another option that I consider more likely than the 4 you listed: Give people a Social Security check with one hand and tax it away with the other. You saved for retirement? You obviously don’t need all that money! As mentioned in the article, they started taxing SS benefits in the 1980s and increased it in 1993 – this despite the fact that we’ve already paid income tax on the money they apply SS taxes to. I see them raising the taxes on income above the SS benefit amount to the point where any money received in SS benefits is completely eaten up by taxes and many then some.
Retirement systems, both public and private are supposed to be fully funded therefore there should not be a problem with people retiring at the agreed to date! We should not have to work into our retirement years simply because the entitled culture wishes to rob from the retirement fund.
Jobs??? What jobs? If the government wouldn’t have confiscated all the money they took to begin with for ss, I wouldn’t have needed ss. The company I used to work for no longer exists, and I have been doing everything I can to stay afloat. I have taken a job where over half my pay was stolen. I have taken a job that was a scam unknowingly.
If I hadn’t had the moxy to buy stock when the world was crashing, I’d have already lost my house by now.
The choice to keep working later in life is fine, but it should be in addition to what ss pays out. Most people in this country can barely live on what it does pay. I have met these people. They are so poor it scares me to death.
Thank you. I live among those of us who are so
poor, it is frightening. I am one of those although
I work. Much needs to be figured into restructing
SS. As for working…well, good luck finding a job
that can pay for substanence…especially if you are
over 60. So much has changed in the last 40 years
except those who continually take from the system.
I see a huge scam everyday of the disability system and
fatherless children system. Having children for money
definitely NEEDS to stop.
A reality check here:
1. Older workers are finding it difficult if not impossible to find work.
2. The longer one is unemployed, the lower the probability that they will find work.
We frequently see people in our Engaged Retirement programs that are desperate to find work, but have lost hope. Filing age discrimination claims is futile.
At 70 if you’re in decent health you feel pretty much the way you did at 40, with the exception that you’re more prone to go prone (nap) in the afternoon. So a standard job, with a little afternoon rest, can be easily handled. And I assume that a heck of a lot of money could be saved by raising eligibility to 70 and allowing reduced benefits for those retiring at 67. So let’s do it. P.S. I’m 69.
You’ve obviously never worked on a farm or held a job in the trades.
Think you could work a job pouring cement for 8 to 10 hours a day at age 70?
The last people we need opining on the retirement age are office bees who habitually complain about there back hurting from lifting the outsize cup of coffee they consume while watching porn on the internet behind their bosses back.
Tolbert, nobody’s saying that someone has to work a manual labor job until age 70; I’m a fan of extended retirement but will concede that some jobs take more of a physical toll than others. But there’s no reason that someone with an aging body can’t continue to work in a job that requires more of a mental aspect–supervision, training, etc. in one’s chosen field, for example.
If someone expects to live the last 30-40 years of life in retirement, he or she should be contributing a much larger portion of income to that retirement, because the government (a.k.a. us) can’t afford to pay for it.
Bahahahaha! *Cleans spewed coffee from ginormous super-sized cup of coffee off of Monitor*
Seriously, what is going to happen to the manual laborers when their bodies give out? I mean, there are only so many “Wal-Mart greeter” jobs to go around!
Senators Rand Paul and Lindsay Graham have it right: raise the retirement age to as high as 70, and do it sooner than 2050 or 2075. Here’s how: for everyone age 52 or younger (their current full Social Security eligibility age would be 67)raise the age for full Social Security and Medicare (still 65, for no good reason)to 69 or 70. Cut rather than increase the FICA payroll tax rate. The total payroll tax rate for ordinary employees is now 19%, 20% or higher, when all payroll taxes are taken into account.
A couple of points:
1) I think some companies can’t wait for their older workers to retire, because older workers cost more. Where I work, we have lots of employees who have been here for 30-40 years or so, in the business office. Several have been let go because of “restructuring,” and then they brought in younger workers starting at less than half the salary.
2) If you raise the retirement age, how will that affect younger adults looking for work – either those coming out of college, or even the kid who wants to get a job at the McDonalds but can’t because they’re giving all their jobs to seniors? There’s going to have to be a tradeoff somewhere.
Really, though, the only people I know that have retired are former government workers and members of the military. Most everyone else I know of that age is still working because they feel they have to. Makes me wish I had listened to my dad and got a governemnt job years ago!
SJ, I agree that Tom is dealing with only one side of the equation. Companies often unload their older employees during rather nebulous ‘reorganizations’. They know exactly what they’re doing and legally protect themselves. They’re quite sophisticated at dumping their older employees and do. Arguing what should be versus what is holds little meaning.
I’m 60. I like what I do and hope to keep working as long as I can. My father works 20 hours a week as a receptionist at a museum. He’s 90.
A person’s retirement is their private responsibility; it is not a collective responsibility.
Once you apply this principle the problem of “retirement age” disappears.
Socialism both lite and full-calorie is the problem.
Well said. Now the trick is to get the government out of the retirement business.
…and out of people’s wallets so they can afford to invest in their own retirement.
9. Biloxipat,
The SS taxes you paid over the years are long gone. They paid for the benefits of others while you were working.
When you retire and get SS other workers will take your place and pay taxes which will go to you.
SS is welfare disguised as a retirement plan.
When I was a young teenager, in my tender innocence, I used to wonder what was this Social Security thing all about. If it was supposed to take care of me when I got old, why not just invest my own money and live out of it when I am old?
I grew up, and I had to face the tough reality of life. I saw face to face all the complications, challenges and threats. Painfully, I came to understand all the problems that awaited when I reached my old age, and which were impossible to imagine in the innocence of childhood.
Now I am older, and wise. The reality of life has become as clear to me as it can ever be. And this is why I now ask: instead of being robbed of 5 to 12 percent of my pay by the Social Security, why can’t I just keep and invest my own f***ng money and live out of it when I decide that I am old?
“Keep on working” is simplistic nonsense. It ignores the reality of a youth oriented culture (the same one where actresses routinely go under the knife to stay young enough looking to land jobs.)
Companies are pushing out the 50+ workers because they can hire 2 recent college grads for the 50+ worker’s salary.
If you’re unlucky enough at 50 to find that Obama policies ruined your company or the company gets sold or [insert common reason how and why someone can find themselves out of work at ZERO fault of their own] then good luck finding employment with the same pay. Doesn’t matter if you’re good at what you do. Unless you’re demonstrably exceptional at a key position in some company that can’t afford to NOT have you (good luck with that) then a college kid *can* and *will* do your job for less pay.
This is the reality of the non-government work force.
I don’t know if you’re simply clueless or you have a job that’s mandated by government to exist (i.e. if you sell car insurance, state law requiring all drivers to purchase your product is guaranteeing you a right to profit, isn’t it?) Maybe you have one of those few jobs where getting older is seen as a positive. Doesn’t matter. Your article is divorced from reality for most American workers (i.e. jobs where you work for someone else and you aren’t in complete control.)
Hmmm, “raising the retirement age” is of a piece with the “One Big Answer” school of thought that got us into this mess.
I’m a ship’s electrician…do you expect me to be out at sea climbing masts and rigging into my late 60′s?
How about miners or construction workers? Should they be in the pits or on the steel in their 70′s?
There’s a very good reason that the rates of disability pensions is so high.
The DoL has very specific job requirements, for every single job, that workers doing that job MUST meet. If you become medically unqualified to do that job, then you are disabled.
You might think this is BS, but would you like to be driving by a construction site with a geezer crane operator who suffers from cataracts?
Now if you’d like to see me work until I’m 75 or 80, then I’m always available for subsidized job retraining, (I reckon that being a US Trade Representative isn’t too physically stressful, and I’m not convinced that I would do a worse job than some of the clowns that HAVE been doing that gig.)
Bilgeman;
We have to raise the retirement age, no question.
People in physically demanding jobs should be looking for easier jobs before they hit their 60s. Heck, ballerinas “retire” at 30 and find other employment.
If you have a physically hard job, plan on switching careers later in your life. Sounds harsh, but there just isn’t any other alternative.
“People in physically demanding jobs should be looking for easier jobs before they hit their 60s. Heck, ballerinas “retire” at 30 and find other employment.
If you have a physically hard job, plan on switching careers later in your life. Sounds harsh, but there just isn’t any other alternative.”
I take you point, but do you see the flaw in your prescription?
Which desk jockey is willing to give up his or her job to me so that they can go farting about in boats?
The only way this would work is if no-one was allowed to do physically undemanding labor until they hit their forties….and that would entail a centrally planne economy.
The reality is that if your job is physically demanding, you’ll likely have to change jobs or careers well before retirement age. Take the case that I learned about just today: a good friend’s son is an electrician. He hurt his back and can’t do the job any more. Fortunately, he was just offered a scholarship to train at becoming a physical therapist. He’s in his mid 30s and has to change careers. I know others who’ve gone into different careers when they’re no longer able to do their old jobs. No one volunteered to step aside for them. They had to go learn new skills and earn a job like everyone else. If you wait for someone to step aside for you, you’ll be waiting a very long time.
Get work training your replacements; God knows they need it.
As a ship’s Engineer told me long ago; the textbook may say you
need a 2″ diameter drive shaft, but Ma’ Nature says go to 2.5″.
Talk about raising the retirement age validates and enables the Washington kleptocracy. Each time she went back to California Baroness Pelosi spent more money on the plane flight than many working people pay in taxes during their entire working lives. That is an obscenity. Enabling it is an obscenity.
If the aristocracy in government didn’t steal 50% of what we earn during our lives, many of us could retire at 50.
Well, SS was always a ponzi scheme that should have never been implemented, and we should have encouraged people to work as long as they felt fit at whatever job they felt they could best be capable of — there is a correlation between fulfilling work, longevity, and mental health.
Now we are stuck with an entrenched system that has many dependent seniors (there are people who need their SS checks to survive) and we have seniors either not able to find work or taking jobs that are really best for young people (seniors really are physically taxed by jobs that would seem easy to a 20 – 40 yr. old — that’s not fulfilling work), plus displacing young people out of jobs traditionally held by them.
“At 70 if you’re in decent health you feel pretty much the way you did at 40″
No, you don’t. Unless you felt like an old man at 40.
Well, there was that amazing guy known as the recently departed Jack Lalanne but he was the shining exception.
One of the big the myths about aging is that since we live longer that somehow the degradation of old age has been pushed back. It hasn’t. There are many people who can’t work their jobs much past 70 years old. It’s easy for Clint to be a Hollywood director. I don’t see him making action movies anymore.
And there are many people in their 70s who can work at a desk job. Those that can, will have to.
Great idea! Have the federal government legislate that all employers must have desk jobs created for all the old folks. The federal government in all great socialist style dictates everybodys live now, not to mention private sector employers. And as somebody else eluded to more young folks can just hangour and play them video games if more old folks are employed to 70…or are there plenty of jobs for everybody?
Visions of elderly folks chained to their government-mandated desk-jobs whilst stewing in their adult diapers just seems somehow…wrong.
I worked until 72.5 and only retired when the annual retirement fund projection report noted if I continued to work it would take another 4.0 years in that system for my benefits to increase $1 per month, but until then they would decrease by about $2 per month, on average. Hmmmmm. What to do? Gamble I would stay healthy another 4 years or pull the plug now? In my case arbitrary actuary increments hastened my departure. They need to be worked out better than that, IMO.
This article is pretty good.
I would add that the best short term fix is probably to raise the MINIMUM retirement age rather than the normal retirement age. My understanding is that most people currently begin collecting benefits at 62. If that were lifted to 63, and later 64, that alone might make the program solvent for many more years. It would have the added benefit of encouraging people to work longer, which might be good for many people.
But there are other fixes that you don’t hear about either. A spouse can collect 1/2 the other spouse’s payment, even if the first spouse’s benefit is much lower. What’s with that? Doesn’t that encourgage a few years of low-level work and then dropping out of the workforce?
Other corrective measures are possible as well. But, as another poster said recently, the ultimate solution to the problem (since private accounts will probably never happen, and they would just cause other problems anyway) is to set the retirement age at the then-normal lifespan age less some number of fixed years.
But the much bigger problem is Medicare. Somehow, the adults need to cut through the demagogery and teach the country that unlimitted medical benefits are a liberal wet-dream. It was never possible, and will never be possible. Either the payouts become fixed or old people will have to place their lives in the death panels’ hands. At least with vouchers, seniors will have a chance to save themselves from bureaucrats making life and death choices for them that help the people who bribe the bureaucrats the most.
This article would make sense, if there weren’t a lot of us who are unemployed. What the author is saying, near as I can tell, is that the solution to our budget problems is keeping the workers we have in jobs, and letting the unemployed get on on their own. Sort of “let them eat cake” (yes, I know she probably didn’t say it, but it fits) without the benefits. What with the Dems agreeing, action-wise, that unemployment should stay high while saying otherwise, the situation’s looking pretty grim for the unemployed. And of course, every time I look up that SS retirement age that was 65 or 62 gets moved further back. Does anyone here know the definition of the phrase “moving the goal posts”? Never mind that the value of the payments that I’ll get (providing I get any) will outweigh whatever I’ve paid into the system…if you tell someone the rules, and then change them in mid-game, people are going to be pissed about it, especially if someone else benefited at their expense under the old system.
every time I look up that SS retirement age that was 65 or 62 gets moved further back. Does anyone here know the definition of the phrase “moving the goal posts”?
So does the average lifespan. Would you rather die younger?
My grandfather died of cancer at age 60. My father at age 65, if he hadn’t taken early at 62, he would have gotten nothing out of SS.
Of my father’s five brothers, none of them lived past the age of 66, the younger ones passing away of cancer at ages 41 and 56 respectively.
I would deduce that unless some major miracle occurs, which I am not counting on, in the next decade, then I too will have paid into SS for a lifetime and not be able to leave those accumulated funds to my heirs.
SS is a Ponzi scheme.
The people who should really be pissed are black males, who get the least return for their payments into SS.
Black males have a higher than average tendency to kill each other, which gets factored into lifespan statistics. If they want the benefits, they’re going to have to change their premises.
A fairly high percentage of black American males don’t pay for their own offspring’s welfare either but, rather leave it up to the tax-payers…so it’s kind of a wash in that case (if they even ‘work’ at all [unless you consider gang-banging and drug-dealing 'work']).
and conservatives wonder why they don’t stay in office.
the choice is idiots or morons
yes, it’s true those tedious old people are the reason we’re not rich…
:: ))
Of course no one ever suggests that people who have enough shouldn’t retire. But why should they work? Why not get out of the way for people who do need to work?
we don’t suggest it because we hold personal wealth as sacred, as we should.
but since our society stands erect solely because it rests on the backs of manual laborers, to suggest that those people continue to labor out of their fifties is flatulence.
As long as early retirement (62) is available, it’s a better deal than waiting until 65 or 70 to retire. I did the math and I would have to live to 78 before I began to lose money on the deal. Given that I’ve seen many family members die in their early sixties, I’ll probably choose to begin collecting at 62, since it’s an option.
As for paying for previous generations – much of what I put into SS was for MY generation, since we were told we had to build up surpluses. Pay as you go was no longer sufficient, so we paid far more than was required to pay the benefits for our parents. That money was supposed to pay for OUR benefits. It was stolen from us.
Agreed, males in my family don’t live much beyond the 65 year mark.
An amazing article from several perspectives! A classic example of those who will jump on the ‘follow-me wagon’ with zero independent reasoning…..or very flawed independent reasoning to say the least.
Since when does some arbitraty age decide a persons [legitimate] ability to continue working? It doesn’t! Thats why there is such thing as disability eligiblity benefits which is at a higher rate than normal retirement. Remember this one!
Should required work status and retirement be determined by when a person reaches a marked point beyond diminished quality of life?
Folks either forget or are remarkably ignorant of the fact that millions of American’s perform long hours of hard physical labor everyday of their life. Likewise, they forget or are ignorant of the fact that millions more spend a lifetime working with and in environments of high health risk contaminates of a million varieties. Hard labor and risks that excellerate ones diminished physical health….from the skeletal, the muscular, the organs and the nervous system. Aging alone can deminish the things given one genetics. Maybe read up on the scientific literature of [when and how] the dementias come into a persons life.
The populist premise of many and indicative of this article on this subject, is short sighted to say the least!
Do you really want your 69 year old grandpa topping 100 foot timber…walking the steel 30 stories up….and on down the very long list of high health risk and dangerous jobs that takes the ultimate toll on ones body long before age 65? Do you really want retirement for your grandparents to come the day they become bed ridden or have no remaining quality of life?
If so and the governments retirement model is to be retained in America, you folks had better start thinking with some insight and foresight that extends beyond your eyebrows!
With the premise of this article and extending retirement eligiblity beyond 65, consider this. Millions upon millions of Americans will go an alternate route becoming ['legitimately'] eligible for disability benefits which pays out a significantly higher rate of monthly income….and very possibly other government subsidized forms health care eligibility.
And before the stones start coming my way, at 82, with 32 years of active duty military service and another full private sector career, I have never drawn a penny of social security nor do I use my government health care entitlement and we donate 100% of my government retirement.
T.T. Thomas,
May you have many, many, more years ahead of you.
You sir, are an example to us all.
that’s right! Dump the old geezers onto the job market so that young people who are now lining up at MacDonald’s can give up hope of ever finding jobs.
Thank you! And where are the jobs all of us old people are supposed to get?
Here is my fix for my social security investment: Give me back all of the deductions which were taken at 3% interest, counpounded annually, and forward that onto the next ten years as a tax credit.
The total amount as a monthly is a poor supplement. The rest of the retirement package, I would take care of myself.
The SS Ponzi scheme is broken, but not the contractual obligations. The rest of the payor/payees portion can go to Medicare or some other social welfare program under new management.
Ever since Social Security was established, Politicians have been taking from the system by double hands full. The Social Security System as a entity separate from the Government melting pot would still be working.
What need to be done is not penalize those of us who have spent our whole lives paying into as system where Politicians have been taking out of quicker than we can replenish it.
Social Security need to revert to a separate entity from the government “GO TO POOL”
1. People who have never paid into Social Security should not be allowed to draw from it.
2. No illegal Alien should be allowed to draw Social Security and none their hundreds of dependants should not be allowed to draw one penny from Social Security. Let them go back to Mexico, or Equator, or Cuba or wherever they come from to retire.
Because while they are here they get free Health Care, Free Dental, free housing, free food stamps, Free Transportation. Free everything that is why there is nothing left for Working Americans.
3. Do away with Medicade and make the dead beats get out and get a job, and start paying their fair shair of Social Security,
4. The United States especialy, under the obama regime has gone from a nation of helpers to a nation of takers.
Later retirement does sound exciting in theory, but probably for all the wrong reasons. We old people get weaker & less coordinated as we get older. Even at my youthful 75 years of age, I find it harder to climb stairs because I get out of breath. It’s also hard to carry stuff without falling or tripping, mostly because my eyes don’t see or focus clearly and my balance is not as good as it used to be. I’d be a real exciting addition to any workplace as I struggled to get through the day without killing myself or maiming others!
Larsen…you can always tell who the King Kong youngin’s are by the total disrespect for reality and other human beings. Their rants on behalf of political activism is exactly why this once greatest nation has come to where it is today. I love to listen and observe them rant from the mountain tops about individual responsibilty, when they demand their employers pay for a host of benefits on their behalf….when people from 50 states subsudizes their emergency service personnel and equipment…the government subsudizes and backs the bonds to build their sewage treatment plants, the government subsidizes their hospitals and highways….and on down the ver4y long list it goes.
They live in a world in which one-size-fits-all is the standards of the day…..all should be as individually respsonsible in society as they claim to be while enjoying all the government handouts they seemingly are ignorant of. I have yet to see or hear any of them say what they have contributed in any meaningful and consistant ways to the inequality of natures humanity…so the government doesn’t have to.
Despite their rants of holier than thou political ideology, most of them are solidly and ignorantly indocrinated into socialisms individualistic paradigm strategies….a strategy that historically has never failed to bring down even the greatest of societies.
This is why I have NO hope for any traditional values and a traditional America ever being restored. Our generations not only took the responsibility of caring for ourselves and our families but also those in our communities and wherever else we could provide assistance for those in need. No government was ever needed back in the days when there was a common fabric of morality and religious values in a family and community unitized society.
Mr. Blumer comments are right on the mark. I do wonder, however, why it is that we allow the “early” retirement provision of Social Security to remain as an option for individuals choosing to accept benefits (albeit slightly reduced) at age 62, when at the same time we insist that the regular or “full benefits” age threshold should be 67 or, soon, much higher? Isn’t it time we simply “retired” the “early” retirement provision of Social Security altogether? Is there a compelling reason why we shouldn’t?
I might be showing my ignorance here but is anyone forced to collect Social Security at any age? What’s the problem with everyone who wants to do so just continuing to work til they drop dead? I feel about these people the same as I do the ones who insist they’re not paying enough taxes. Work longer, pay more taxes! But don’t expect that the rest of the world is in a big rush to join you.
Just leave us the hell alone. We’re tired!
WOW!!!
It is time to stop worrying about our country and go in to full fledged panic when a significant number of posters on PJM start sounding like petulant little children!
Do I want grandpa to top timber at 70? ONLY IF HE WANTS TO! What I want, what the constitution demands, what morality makes obvious and what common sense dictates is that we each, on our own, are responsible for our retirements.
It was my responsibility to provide for myself and my wife when I was 22 years old, now at 46 and when I reach the age of 65, God willing. It is NO ONE ELSES responsibility!
I have over half a million in my own 401K and IRA accounts and haven’t counted on getting a social security check since I was in high school. How did I save so much, simple, I invested it first, before I bought anything else. I made it a priority. I took responsibility for my own retirement.
Complain about the government lying to us, then get over yourselves and take responsibility for your own futures!
Do I wish the government had honorable men and women who didn’t pass special laws for themselves, who exercised even a sliver of fiscal responsibility, who didn’t view the ability to lie as a positive trait? Absolutely! That’s why every person who I have ever voted for has either run on a platform of honesty and fiscal responsibility or has governed with these traits. If they didn’t, they no longer received my vote – PERIOD!
It is sickening how many people in this country look the other way when our politicians act in such disgusting ways. Harry Reid winning re-election is an absolute travesty and the people of Nevada should hang their heads in shame.
I do what I can to make a difference, mostly by voting for honest, fiscally responsible people. When there are enough Americans doing the same, maybe we can turn things around.
I have no personal objection to extending, incrementally, the age for full Social Security retirement benefits for people born after 1961 – I was born in 1941, am retired and have received reduced Social Security benefits since I was sixty-two. Back then the general, and I think best, advice was to accept the reduced benefits rather than to wait for full benefits unless one were sure of living for a very long time past sixty-five. I think that privatization and/or other proposals, such as eliminating tax disincentives for continuing to work (and therefore for continuing to pay into Social Security) for as long after retirement as one wishes and is able, make lots of sense. There are not likely significant numbers of old folks who would occupy entry level or manual labor type positions of the sorts generally taken (when available) by new entrants in the job market.
Specious claims that Social Security retirement benefits, for which people were and are required to pay when working, are a species of welfare and therefore an undeserved and optional form of governmental charity irritate me. I paid my required share into the Social Security Ponzi scheme when I was an associate (an employee) in a law firm and the firm also paid its share for me, about half of the amount I paid. When I became a partner, I became “self employed” and had to pay my own full amount, with no employer “contribution,” plus my pro rata share of our firm’s “contributions” to our employees’ Social Security accounts. Had I been permitted to invest what I was required to pay on my own behalf, a significant amount as I recall , as well as what I was required to pay on behalf of others, a significant amount as well, that would have been better for me then and also now. Under the laws mandating Social Security “contributions,” I couldn’t lawfully do so.
The money everyone else and I “contributed” over the years was dumped into the general fund and used to pay for whatever whimsy our government deemed expedient. Now to throw the consequences of this theft on those from whom the funds were taken without their consent seems not only unfair — worse than a Bernie Madoff response because he took only money given voluntarily on illusory promises of unrealistically high returns — but also stupid. Doing that should not be a first or intermediate step out of the present financial pickle and there is no need for it to be the last. Reduction or elimination of various social welfare benefits paid to those who contributed nothing to the funds needed to pay them, bailouts of financial institutions and other business and labor entities for the consequences of their own mismanagement, “investments” in fighting the supposed horrors of man-made global warming, payments to the United Nations so that our money can continue to be squandered, etc. etc. ad infinitum should do quite nicely.
Counselor…great read, however, you fail to acknowledge what I consider to be the crux of the problem in terms of any alternative reforms ongoing for future generations.
Todays generations are indocrinated into the fiscal theory of deficit spending and employer paid or matched benefits. They don’t have any knowledge or motivation to live within their income cash flow and save.
How do you turn around a society that for so many decades have demanded employers to support their most critical fiscal responsibilities and at the same time, live on credit far beyond their income means?
As I will continue to say, the nation is broken from the bottom up…not the top down.
It would probably be political suicide, but how about eliminating Social Security “contributions” as such and collecting at least the same amounts as regular taxes; couple this with an announcement that new workers won’t get any government “charity” and had better save their pennies if they think they might ever want to retire. Surely, the countless beneficiaries of President Obama’s saved or created jobs would be delighted at this opportunity to help Win the Future.
Here’s another idea: eliminate all tax withholding and require everyone to make quarterly estimated payments. When I ceased to be an “employee” and became “self-employed” as a partner in the law firm, my taxes ceased be withheld in their previously quasi-tolerable fashion; that’s what I had to do. Writing checks to the IRS to make estimated quarterly payments certainly impressed upon me that we are taxed out the tush. Come April 15, if I hadn’t sent enough in estimated quarterly payments I had to write another check to pay the rest, sometimes with penalties. That reenforced the perception. This would certainly diminish any odd pleasures of Tax Day based on the expectation of really neat tax refunds of our own money.
I wonder how such measures would affect the perceptions of some that taxes are OK.
Dan….it hardly serves any reasonable discuss to suggest such ideas!
You are overlooking a core problem for which there is simply NO solution for anytime soon, in your lifetime or your great grand kids.
1. Consumer credit/debt is a major component of the national economy….by design. Deficit spending is now human nature….not savings!
2. Employer provided essential benefits only serve one purpose in our society. Employees are irresponsible to provide such essential benefits on their own no matter how much you pay them.
3. Our society transitioned from a family and community unitized society to an individualistic society….and a transient society. There is essentially no longer any compassionate charity for others among this individualistic society…especially for health care needs.
4. Nothing on the face of this earth, from organic to inorganic are created nor evolves with any degree of equality! The founders and the drafters of the constitution in all their wisdom understood this fact thus, they spoke only to equal rights and opportunity.
5. From the beginnings of recorded history there has always been those with means and those without. I know of no wisdom from the teachings of any religion that does not express campassion for those of little or no means…not from a government but from mankind. Mankind has failed this teaching or as some would say, responsibility and thus, the government steps in and does what the people fail to do….by taxing those who failed in their charge….and redistributing those funds to the services needed by those who haven’t the means.
Does you suggested solution address and fix all these failings?
Again, the nation is broken from the bottom up…not the top down.
T.T., I shall immediately wash my keyboard out with lye soap — just as soon as I can get a suitable government grant for that purpose. This may delay the posting of my reply, but it’s necessary and proper.
I can understand people wanting to raise the SS age limit, because we are living longer. I ask you what about the people that work in the trades? I worked 35 years in the field as a bricklayer and another 4 years as a union business representative. At age 57 I had to retire because my knees and hips were wore out, I can not walk very far, climb scaffolding or sit to long without pain. On top of that my heart went a-fib, but if you want my SS take it but give it to my grand kids, that`s all I ask. I will make money again even if I have to crawl to use my tools again. I never asked nobody for a free handout!
People keep on opining on a subject that they have no knowledge of whatsoever. They just assume Medicare dollars go to taking care of elders medical expenses, wrong!
Your right on point! Folks with all the rhetoric have never taken the time to become informed of who is actually drawing upon the spending of medicare/medicaid dollars. The aged, 65 and older, the blind and the ‘legitimate’ disabled are a minority in the medicare/medicaid system.
T.T. Thomas
Apparently, your one of them.
First of all, the argument shouldn’t be about how to make these programs solvent, but rather how to get rid of them all together. Why, because no American can morally, ethically or constitutionally justify confiscating money from me to pay for goods and services that are their responsibility.
Second, throwing the two programs, medicare and medicaid, together and talking about the the average age of recipients is deceptive at best. These are two distinct programs:
Medicare is for those over the age of 65 with provisions for specific dissabilities for those under 65. The age distribution of medicare recipeints is 17% under 65 and 83% over 65. In math class I learned that 83% of anything is a SIGNIFICANT majority by any standard. The Medicare budget for 2010 was 452 billion. That’s 76.8 billion for those under 65 and 375.2 billion for those over 65.
Medicaid is for the low income of which all ages are elligible. The majority of these recipients are under 65. The age distribution of recipients is 90% under 65 and 10% over 65. That’s 224 billion for those under 65 and 56 billion for those over 65.
Adding the total benefits together yields the following totals:
Over 65: Medicare 375.2 billion + Medicaid 56.0 billion = 431.2 billion
Under 65: Medicare 76.8 billion + Medicaid 224.0 billion = 300.8 billion
That’s still 59% of expenditures for those over 65 and 41% for those under 65.
Guess you need to check your assumptions.
Brad…thanks for all the specific information! When a person doesn’t know how to correlate ‘legislation’ to data well…..you get exactly what you printed. You obviously don’t know anything about all the legislated programs that are funded through medicare and medicaid. All your data is based “medicare” enrollee’s and you failed to address dual enrollee’s.
Best wishes!
T.T.
At least I made an effort to actually look at the data! You simply make an assertion without any evidence other than because you say so.
As to the data I pulled, it all came directly from the actual fiscal budget numbers and medicare and medicaid numbers from US.GOV.
Fact is, whether you like it or not, those of us aged 65 and over not only consume the majority of publically funded health care dollars, on a per person basis we consume a disproportionate amount.
Prove I’m wrong with research and data, not incorrect opinion.
The left hasn’t divided America into enough warring factions – now we hear the same evil from the right?
First the right hates the God and family crowd – “it’s really about taxes folks.” Then we saw them turn on teachers, without which no truth or society can survive, and now they attack the greatest generation for being old?
Who needs liberals?
Please read the column:
The age for full benefits needs to move gradually higher for anyone born in 1961 or later.
The retirement age extension proposed in the column has NOTHING to do with the WWII generation.
It would be nice if you would acknowledge the fact that you have erred in your assessment — because you have.
Brad……If you understood the governments accounting systemS (if you want to call them as such), you would learn very quickly to dismiss most all government and special interests charted data. On occasion, the GAO will try to track legislated funds through ‘some’ of the Executives Branches 200 some departments, agencies and corporations. All I will tell you is that on those ocassions of a department or two, they come up with Billions in missing/unaccounted funds that you will not find adjusted for in any data according to where the monies actually went to and got spent, or slushed.
But back to medicare! Read the 1930′s original legislation. Then track expansion legislation up [to] the LBJ New Society. Then read the LBJ New Society legislation. Finally, you should then read most all the social legislation from that point forward sponored or co-sponsored by by Teddy K. Pay close attention to the original legislation that establishes benefactors. One class of benefactors should jump up and slap you! That class has expanded systematically decade by decade. As you may note from reading the original legislation, the federal government program was one that would “GRANT FUND” to the states for all benefactor programs. ALL the programs become, over time, controlled, managed and funded by centralized departments and agencies of the Executive Branch EXCEPT ONE! Within this class of benefactors, some track through the conventional social security, medicare and medicaid system while a HUGE….HUGE number are disqualified after means testing but remain benefactor eligible for the same benefits, all with different names, as the social security, medicare and medicaid triggered system programs. These programs remain GRANT FUNDED (1930′s language) to the States through medicare and medicaid legislation.
Today, several departments and agencies and States serve to administer a host of programs expanding upon the original leglistion and if you thorougly understand how appropriation works in conjuction with legisation most American’s, maybe, would come to understand what a fraud government accounting systems are and the data they produce. Medicare legislation funds more programs than you think! The federal government loves to make things so complex in construction and approriations, that even the best of lawyers often have a difficult time understanding how anything actually works. The GWA Project is, in it early stages, trying to retify legislative and government wide accounting reforms and multi department and agencies adminstering the same legislated appropriated funding regardless of what name(s) a program may go by.
End of discussion!
In all human cultures old codgers are supported by their children. Social Security distributes the codgers around and that works ok so long as some of them had kids. We took care of our parents, who in turn sacrificed their dreams of being rock stars and eco gurus and raised us.