The Phony Social Security Crisis

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Mano Singham, whose brilliant blog I follow, has a beautiful sequence of posts on Social Security.

Apparently, SS has become the pet-hate du jour of some people, and the Democrats are trying to fix it.  Singham described most of the popular suggested fixes.  I'll just mention two ideas, and how they were decided in such a way as to screw the working class.

Most of us do not realize that your income is taxed for Social Security only up to about $106,000 a year.  So, your ordinary millionaires are not taxed on all their income, for Social Security, just the first tiny bit.  Of course, this means that they won't get as much Social Security when they retire, compared to their present incomes.  But one expects that they will have a lot more savings than the rest of us.  One of the suggestions is that this cap be removed completely.  In other words, everybody pays a fixed proportion of their income into Social Security.  Anyone earning less than $106,ooo a year will never know the difference, except for the screaming of the plutocrats.  But there seems to be much opposition to this move.  Why?  Because most of the opposition is from fairly wealthy people (many of whom are in Congress) who have rich friends, and they're fighting for themselves.  Those who are for raising this cap e.g. progressive Democrats and other "left-leaning" folks are fighting for the poor, and obviously it is a lot harder to fight for a principle that benefits someone else than it is to keep something for yourself.  This move, to raise the cap, screws the wealthy class, so of course it is not going to work.

A very popular suggestion is to raise the retirement age to 70.

Think about this.  As Mano Singham points out, the kind of work that the upper classes do can still be done even when you're older.  You'll be stuck in an air-conditioned office, peering anxiously at your stocks losing value, every weekday from 9 to 5.  This is a hardship.  If they would let you retire at 55, you could do that at home, while the dog drools on your lap.  Honestly, a lot of upper management (read: income before taxes a lot higher than $106,000 per year) does little other than watch it's money grow on the stock market.

On the other hand, if you work in a factory, or as a waitress, or as a teacher in an elementary school, or a clerk in a store, you get to keep on working until you're 70.  Of course, it's still air-conditioned, but for these active occupations, you have to actually work, often on your feet.  This is not just dragging yourself over to the coffee machine.  Raising the retirement age is staggering for those who perform strenuous work.  For those whose work is in the mind, very few of us can actually see the work taking place.

So the move to raise retirement age screws the working classes, and of course a majority of congressmen would go for that.  After all, it is traditional that the poor must work a lot harder for anything they get than the wealthy, even poor senior citizens.  This plan is going to pass.

I personally plan to work past the usual retirement age simply because my retirement savings aren't worth a tinker's cuss.  And who made sure that my savings aren't worth a tinker's c*%&$?  A crew whose incomes are a lot greater than $106,000, namely the so-called Wall Street sons of bitches who screwed up the Mortgage industry, gotta love 'em.

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