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Woman welder attaching pipe angles. (photo: Arthur S. Siegel, Library of Congress)
Hey, Ms. Rivlin, that’s some sweet job you’ve got there, sitting behind a paper-covered desk reading spreadsheets and reports from your BFFs, and trading e-mails with rich people like your buddy Peter Peterson. I know you’ll want to keep doing that forever. Who wouldn’t? Rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty, deciding the fate of the little people…
Just once, Alice, just once, get out of the office and go find this woman, or the one who holds this job today. Tell her she has to keep doing it until she is 70 before she can collect full Social Security. Explain, as only someone as smart and entitled as you are can, that you understand she might feel cheated, because she has paid for her benefits so the rich could have their tax cuts, but after all, we have to share the pain so we can have lots of war money. If you can work until you are going on 80, the least she can do is work until she is 70.
And you, Alan Simpson, take a look at this guy (this is copyrighted, please click through, you won’t regret it). He may be French, but there are lots of guys in America with jobs like his and no one like Willy Ronis to take their picture. Get out of your air-conditioned office, into your air-conditioned limo and onto your air-conditioned jet and find one of those guys and tell him to his steel-smeared face that you are still working at 79, and there isn’t any reason he can’t work until he is 70 before getting his full Social Security benefits. Don’t mention the fact that he has been paying extra so you could pay less. It would just confuse his little brain, and you know better than he does anyway.
Anybody can buy some experts to make up fake town halls and talk to self-selected concerned citizens. Until you find the courage to face real working Americans, stay the hell out of their lives.
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Thank you for this masaccio
*standing on chair clapping wildly*
thank you masaccio
masaccio!! Tis true… these elites could care less about the masses… As long as they have theirs… Same old crap mankind has dealt with for eveha!! Time for the torches and pitchforks… They have bought our Government!!
*joins Suz, standing on my chair, clapping wildly,whistling loudly too!*
Nice.
Great post.
Lets see Nancy hoe a field now for a day then lets ask if she wants to do it at 70. B!#%
The uber-wealthy and their mouthpieces don’t give a damn about the rest of us. I pray they wind up like Marie Antoinette.
Obama do you want to shovel sidewalks of Chicago snow at 70? Scrotmuncher
Chanelling their inner Scroge. All together now, Bah,Humbug! We all best get on with reducing the execess population.
French Revolution Style:)
France starved as the rich ate cake. History repeats but after the revolution France was stronger than it had been since Charlemane.
I’ve never been fortunate to have a job sitting on my ass, pushing paper in air conditioning,(full disclosure; I did have a job in an air conditioned factory for one year until my job was shipped to Puerto Rico).
I’ve stood on concrete 8 plus hours a day bending. twisting, stooping, lifting and busting my ass. At 59 my body is broken. Walk a goddamn mile in my shoes, Alice and your asshole buddies. If I was a believer, I’d say I hope you all rot in hell.
Putting two pieces of garbage like Rivlin and Simpson on a commission to fuck old people out of their money is a deeply immoral act.
This is a deeply immoral president.
On the other hand, if you were, maybe you would have something to look forward to.
Not saying it’s true, but faith is a balm.
Great photo homage to Willy Ronis at Paris.fr. Poor Alice. She ought to do a Barbara Ehrenreich and see how employers nickel and dime the young and old already. As for what such a change to Social Security will do to swell the ranks of the unemployed, what with rampant age, unemployment and credit discrimination, it doesn’t bear thinking.
Like David Brooks, Alice thinks she has a win-win. If the Dems adopt such a policy, they take the hit at the polls. If they don’t, she’ll scream that the “problem”, however she amorphously defines it, is much worse because the Dems failed to adopt her recommendation.
This ceased to be about how best or how well to run the country long ago. It’s now about insiders taking all the radios and tv sets from behind the broken plate glass window before anyone shows up to stop them.
When you have held your only daughter’s hand and watched her take her last breath after watching her suffer from brain cancer for 5 months, then you can talk to me about your gawd and faith. Until you have seen what I’ve seen, shut the hell up and keep your damn bible to yourself.
Not sure, but I think low SS starts (currently) at 62 and full is at 67 and extra is at maybe 70.
No disrespect.
And these people are the lucky ones. Think of all the unemployed 69 year-old’s running around looking for jobs that don’t exist, looking longingly at the brightly-packaged cans of catfood at the grocery store, without the pittance it would take to buy them.
Time to bring back that grand old institution — the poor house. It’s better than leaving people on the street to rifle through trash cans.
RTFO masaccio
Applause
I have a question? Would it be the end of the world if Social security were to be means tested?
I know that you have a very vocal set of those who say ‘why should I pay for some-one else’, but surely those that could fully support themselves in retirement would be quite low.
Well done Masaccio
And thanks for the Ronis link – spectacular.
Good post. If we fail to preserve the dignity of our citizens then the nation itself will no longer be worth saving.
I don’t blame Rivlin and Simpson for thier cannibalistic barbarism. I blame President Obama who dug up this band of ghouls and empowered them to rob the elderly of thier welfare and dignity.
It’s as if the Administration and Congress are intent upon resurrecting Robespierre.
Wonderful essay, masaccio, and spot on.
Right on! Maybe it is time for that “blade that shaves to close”.
Means testing opens the program to legal attack.
Also, one has to ask what problem is being solved by means testing? Saving money?
What % of the population would be means tested out? 1%? 2%? 5%? How much is really being “saved” here?
Social security is just a stable baseline income stream. Why mess with the baseline?
If some people have excess income from other sources then wouldn’t it be more appropriate to increase the taxes on those other sources rather than mess with the already rather humble baseline?
Spoken like a true teabagger Rethug…let them eat prayers.
“Religion is the opiate of the masses.” One thing Marx got 100% correct!
Hey they introduced “Means Testing” at the VA and that cut off millions of Veterans from the benefits they signed up and were promised when they answered the call to duty… and in the name of fiscal restraint they were cut off… try that with wall street and see what happens… It is all
Class warfare… get fucking used to it….. It is only going to get worse…
I would love to still be working – the income drop from job pay to SS benefit is drastic – killing many things as the new budget will not permit them.
But health killed that option, so I would have retired “early” at age 65 – as I did since Reagan has increase the normal retirement past that age – or I would have retired early under the proposed new rules that say normal retired age is 69.
The new rule just makes what I would get at 65 less. It is a benefit cut – it does not make me work a day longer. The age 62 retirement will still exist, but at the actuarial equivalent of an age 69 “normal annuity”, meaning the value -the cost to purchase if sold by an insurance company – was the same for the lower early retirement benefit level beginning at age 62, as it is for the larger benefit level beginning at 69.
These little bureaucrats like Rivlin are truly disgusting.
Nailed it.
The beauty of Social Security is that the program is meant for all who contributed to it regardless of financial need. Means testing moves the program into the area of welfare and shifts the dynamic of any argument regarding the program’s future.
It sure is a class war. A long running one. But I do not plan to get used to the crap coming out of the Washington-Wallstreet nexus.
Can you supply some more info on this. I could use for something I’m writing about how over the entire existence of this country, vets and active duty soldiers have been screwed over.
Thanks.
From the outset, everyone understood that while Social Security was about all some people would have in retirement, for many of us there would be what was called the three-legged stool of retirement: pensions, savings, and Social Security.
Pensions are gone, replaced by 401ks and IRAs, and these took a big hit in the Great Crash. Many people didn’t save a lot of money, thinking that their houses were a store of value. Housing is down, and savings are being eaten up trying to stay afloat.
Now there is an attack on Social Security. This is a form of forced savings: we have been overpaying so there would be a Trust Fund full of money to pay those benefits when we got old.
It is unfair to cut the third leg off people’s retirement plans of many careful people.
They want your money to save themselves. That is all this is about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw_Gf9rhhgw
Boy I thought a deal was a deal. They double my payroll tax and I get it back at 65. So does this mean that they will also reduce my payroll taxes? HA! HA! This Rivlin woman is channeling Barbara Bush. Stunning immorality.
I love love love this post. Yo. Rich fuckers. Do you have confidence in your security people? Do you understand that they hate your guts too?