The 12-member Super Committee is down to its final two weeks to produce a plan to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the federal budget. According to recent reports, both Democratic and Republican proposals have contained sizable cuts from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- all programs that benefit the large majority of Americans in the 99% -- while offering little in the way of new revenues.
The forces of the 1% are hard at work to convince us that these cuts are necessary to the fiscal health of the country, and that anything short of these rollbacks will result in economic doom and crippling levels of debt in the coming decades. Their latest attempt to distract from the real issue at hand -- the enormous transfer of wealth to the top 1% that has taken place in the last forty years -- is to convince us that wealthy seniors are the ones taking from today's younger generations.
This 'generational warfare' angle has unfortunately gained traction in the media recently, and the timing could not be worse. As the Super Committee is deciding whether to cut social programs, these studies imply that since seniors already have much more wealth than the young, it is inappropriate -- even irresponsible -- not to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits.
It is not difficult to spot the errors in these articles. For one, they cite that the median household net wealth of a senior household was $170,494 in 2009, up 42 percent since 1984. This figure includes the value of all property, assets, and savings. But according to the National Association of Realtors, the median sales price of new homes at that time was $172,100. It is not at all surprising that the elderly have more assets than the young: they have worked (and saved) much longer, and most have accumulated property and homes. But beyond the value of their homes and property, the average senior actually has very little accumulated wealth. That is the scandalous news here, not that seniors have more wealth than young workers. (What's more, every age group except the young has experienced net wealth gains in the past forty years -- not just seniors.)
Of course, it is true that young Americans are also in bad shape -- the median net worth of households headed by someone under 35 is only $3,662. There are many causes for this -- for example, high unemployment rates for young people (currently around 18 percent) on account of the recession, which drops earnings and savings levels. But strikingly, cutting Social Security would not help this group at all (especially since they too will rely on it in coming decades). Instead, we need policies targeted to help this age group -- better college loan repayment programs, for instance -- and most of all, jobs.
As the Super Committee enters crunch time, we would be wise to remember the sage wisdom of FDR, who offered this analysis in 1936:
The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them.
Don't be distracted by false claims of generational warfare -- the real struggle is against the forces of the 1% who are trying to squeeze the rest of the country even tighter. We need to remind the Super Committee that in the end, they are accountable to the 99%, who overwhelmingly want no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Robert Kuttner: The Superfluous Super Committee
We are still the wealthiest, most powerful nation in history. At the same time, we rank in the bottom third of all countries for household income distribution, with most of the third-world dictatorships and banana republics. We stink at infant mortality, health care outcomes, education, and just about any other measure you'd apply to a civilized society.
There is shocking news to be found by reading about the GINI Coefficient. And lest the righties think this is a piece of Socialist subterfuge, take a look at the CIA World Factbook, where I got the US ranking. The CIA is paying attention for a reason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html
Well, they can stick it where the sun don't shine.
I've paid my dues, and now they can pay theirs.
Then stop the two unfunded wars, Afghanistan will save a trillion over 10 years and Iraq already cost 1 trillion. Deficit problem disappears. Create jobs by treating China and others as they treat us - essentially return to a mercantilist society, protecting our own industry, and impose a tariff equal to the wage differential so Americans do not compete against slave labor making 85cents per hour and living in cardboard shacks with no electricity and water. Also, punish firms like Whirlpool which take our jobs to Mexico and then sell back into our market, by excluding them from a return to our market for a decade.
Numbers come from the Federal reserve. Not left or right wing sites
Set aside SS, Medicare, and Medicaid, worries,
so we, the people, can DEAL WITH THE REAL ISSUES.
http://bit.ly/uVqmHB
Hereditary Aristocracy is another name.
"Outstanding Richard Escow Article"
"The "Social Security Chain-CPI Massacre": Underhanded, Unnecessary, Unfair, Un-American "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-social-security-chain_b_888380.html
I volunteered for a while with Hospice. The patients I visited were all elderly. Good, salt-of-the-earth people living on very small SS benefits, and not asking for more. But their lives were already so pared down that it's hard to imagine how they could live on less. One woman lived in a house smaller than my living room. She'd worked all her life as a seamstress for a now-defunct company, and spoke proudly of her work.
She had a tiny old black and white TV that got four channels, a rotary dial phone, a refrigerator so old it was one of those small, rounded-top kinds, and an ancient stove. She had no car and depended on her daughter or granddaughter for transportation. And yet lawmakers, in their generosity to the 1%, want to deprive women like this of the very means of survival
This is not the America I grew up in, and it's not an America anyone can afford to grow old in.
The top 1% have nothing to do with it. Confiscate all their income and it would not be enough to pay for 'Medicare, Social Secuity & Medicade.
We need to cut spending. Military and entitlements both need to be reduced. Tax money given to business and special interests eliminated. Whole departments eliminated.
The problem with increasing taxes of any kind is that the temptation for politicians to spend it is too great. They all know if it is not spent on a program that they support the other side will get it, hurting their reelection. Only when politicians take the hard steps to cut spending and get reelected does the process have enough momentum to significantly reduce debt.
If nothing else, assuming they had a good income and plenty of investments to start out with, they'd reach retirement to disover all their retirement savings had gone to provide for their parents. Then they could join the club of all the other seniors who arrive at retirement age without enough savings to survive without some kind of help. We'd quickly find out how firm their libertarian principles were then. We saw that Ayn Rand's principles set her firmly against SS and Medicare - until she needed them.