WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
This story needs to grow legs pronto!
If your party doesn't control Congress or the White House, the wise thing to do is to give folks reasons to vote for your party. But this lesson is lost on the Republicans.
When I read this jaw-dropping story, I almost lapsed into suspension of disbelief:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/106135-boehner-raise-social-securitys-retirement-age-to-70
You read that right: Republicans are boasting that if they regain control of Congress, they plan to raise the retirement age to 70.
Well, I think that little announcement pretty much guarantees that the GOP won't win back Congress. That is, if the media picks up this story. Then again, I think there was zero chance of the Republicans winning it back anyway.
American workers PAID for these benefits. If Social Security goes broke, it's because of mismanagement. And guess which party has controlled the government for most of the past 30 years? So it ain't the Democrats who mismanaged it.
If you want to talk about not getting what you pay for, raising the retirement age would be a perfect example.
Social Security is a contract. Folks pay into it with the expectation that this money will be there for them later. I doubt most people in my area live to be 70, and if they do, their bodies are usually shot long before then. All too often, I read obituaries of former schoolmates who are only about my age. (I'm going on 37.)
Even without raising the retirement age, these folks are never going to see the money they paid into the system. Why make things even worse?
The Republican Congress in the '90s raised the retirement age to 67 for folks born after a certain date. The retirement age should be lowered back to 65.
It's easy for Republicans to sniff about everybody else's "entitlements", when GOP lawmakers have it made for life, thanks to their own unimaginable wealth. This is exactly like how all the extremists on the Internet who complain that the poor have it too easy never have to worry about being poor themselves.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
GOP wants to raise retirement age to 70
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Tim, you're going to live to be AT LEAST 120 years old. You're strong and spry and capable of working hard for many, many decades. Now, what's your alternative solution to fixing social security before it becomes insolvent? There's only a few options, sharply raise social security taxes, reduce benefits or raise the retirement age. Which one do you want? Has nothing to with management, it has to do with more money being paid out then money comes in due to an aging population.
ReplyDeleteI want them to solve it by going back in time and not mismanaging it.
ReplyDeleteBy mismanaging, you mean they should have raised taxes, cut benefits or raised the retirement age sooner?
ReplyDeleteThey should have left office sooner.
ReplyDeleteAll the Republicans fault! No, I'm not actually going to cite any sort of facts to bolster my claim. What do you take me for, a right-winger?
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, Joe Biden supported raising the retirement age. What do you have against a Solvent Social Security?
Also, you can't cite any specific Republican problem, just generic "mismanagement". The problem is that Social Security is just a legal Ponzi scheme. It's not in the execution, it's in the idea.
ReplyDeleteIt takes a real lamebrained Freeper-bot to throw in that "Ponzi scheme" chestnut.
ReplyDeleteIf Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, then so is a regular bank account. Or a piggy bank.
"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned".
ReplyDeleteThat's Social Security.
That's not Social Security, dummy.
ReplyDeleteYes. Yes it is.
ReplyDeleteThe Bandit is thinking of a 401(k) rather than Social Security, which does not have individual accounts.
ReplyDeleteDo Dominic and scheffbd even know what social security is?
ReplyDelete