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The Expansionist
Thursday, March 17, 2005
 
Longevity, Equality, and Social Security. (Long entry; read at your leisure.) Republicans, ever the slimeballs, are suggesting as a fix to Social Security funding woes that we raise the retirement age, on the theory that people are living longer and enjoying a better quality of life.

A leading Republican senator is proposing to raise the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 68 * * * Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel's plan [a trial balloon for the Republican Party floated in one senator's name so the party could disown it if the public reacts with disgust] would raise the age that retirees could receive full benefits, beginning in 2023. "We are living longer," Hagel said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "So when you look at the total universe of this, I think that makes some sense to extend the age."

Simply raising the retirement age would be a ham-handed, unfair solution to a nuanced problem that ignores the fact that different groups in society have different life expectancies.
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Many years ago, the black comic George Wallace joked that life expectancy for black men is 65 years, and the Social Security retirement age was 65: "Why the hell am I paying Social Security taxes?" Good question. Why should any of us pay Social Security taxes if we can expect to die before or shortly after the retirement age a Republican Congress and White House set? In the 1970s I saw a flyer posted on an entrance to the subway near the (then) World Trade Center in New York: "Reagan Retirement Plan: Work Until You Die". That seems to be what the Republicans want for us: work until we drop, at low wages, with minimal benefits, paying maximal taxes so the rich can glide thru life on our labor.
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But contrast this Associated Press report today:

U.S. life expectancy will fall dramatically in coming years because of obesity, a startling shift in a long-running trend toward longer lives, researchers contend in a report published Thursday.

By their calculations — disputed by skeptics as shaky and overly dire — within 50 years obesity likely will shorten the average life span of 77.6 years by at least two to five years [that is, to 75.6 or 72.6]. * * *

Childhood diabetes has increased 10-fold in the past 20 years [so what other nasty surprises could develop before today's young people retire in 40 years?].

"It's one thing for an adult of 45 or 55 to develop type 2 diabetes and then experience the life-threatening complications of that — kidney failure, heart attack, stroke — in their late 50s or 60s. But for a 4-year-old or 6-year-old who's obese to develop Type 2 diabetes at 14 or 16" raises the possibility of devastating complications before reaching age 30, Ludwig said. "It's really a staggering prospect." * * *

The calculations are a stark contrast with Social Security Administration forecasts for slow improvement in life expectancy, and with projections publicized in 2002 that said the maximum human life span will reach 100 in about six decades. In an interview, Olshansky said he hoped the new research would play a role in the current discussion about overhauling Social Security.

And well it should, in a couple of regards. First, there is the absolute age at which people die, and second, there's the question of the quality of life of retirees and the strain upon Medicare if a 'hefty' proportion of retirees are seriously ill because of decades of obesity.
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Many people, especially blacks and the poor, can be expected to DIE before the proposed retirement age of 68 — which of course is just fine with Republicans. They'd much rather people die than that Republicans have to pay higher taxes.
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The more crucial question is not how long we live but how long we have worked. If most of us start to work around age 20, forty-five and more years of labor is ENUF. But there is an insufficiently appreciated disparate impact here, inasmuch as most of the rich and upper middle class attend college before starting work, and many also attend graduate school, so don't start working until at least 22, even 25, whereas the poor, working class, and lower middle class do not attend college, so enter the workforce around age 19, at oldest. If they drop out of high school — for whatever reason, including family economic and time demands — they might start working (at crappy jobs) at 16, so they will have worked for more than 50 years, 50 years of badly compensated toil at things the rest of us don't want to do.
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If longevity is the issue, why not raise the retirement age for women but not for men, to reflect their longer lives? For whites and Orientals, but not for blacks and Hispanics? For the rich, but not the poor? Indeed, why not LOWER the retirement age for poor blacks?
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Life expectancy is a statistical expectation, not a real measure of how long people live, which is established only once they have died. What about all those people who die before they reach "retirement age" — whatever that might be set at? Their survivors get no partial payment, no credit for their years of work. Rather, everything they paid into Social Security goes to others, strangers, and gave them, themselves, nothing. Now here we get to a point that favors individual retirement accounts, which would become part of the estate of a person who dies, to be distributed to his or her heirs (or, if none, to statutory distributees, such as the state, federal government, Social Security Administration, and/or locality — and as to which recipients, the law would have to decide).
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But even if there were such individual accounts, that does not mean we should let individuals who know nothing about investing risk everything because of bad advice, hunches, or an inclination to gamble. If we remove most of the risk, as by permitting investment in only a relatively few 'safe' investments (as tho there is such a thing), then what's the point of letting individuals take risks such that different people get different rates of return? Doesn't that deprive people whose investments turn out badly of "equal protection of the laws"?
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If there are to be individual retirement accounts and the moneys from them are to be invested in stocks, bonds, etc., then the Social Security Administration should hire the very best investment advisors and let them manage everybody's accounts, so everybody experiences the same risks and reaps the same rewards.
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And don't have one organization or one counselor handle everything. Have 100 different investment-advisory firms handle 1% of the total fund each, all 100 pieces of which are merged into a single fund that everyone shares, to minimize the risk to everyone. We could even split the moneys up more, entrusted to 500 or 1,000 or more different firms, spread all across the country, in small towns more than just big cities, but all proceeds flowing into a central fund from which benefits are paid to everyone equitably.
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We could as well forbid any Social Security investment to exceed, say, 20% of the total equity in any given company, further to limit risk. BUT if the Social Security Administration's investment in any given company is large enuf to warrant representation on the board of directors of that company, then by all means the Federal Government should be given a seat on the board, where it can watch the behavior of that company, and thus guard society against the kind of funny business and criminality that produced the savings-and-loan, Enron, and Worldcom scandals.
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Would Republican conservatives like government watchdogs on the board of directors of every major corporation in the Nation? Well, if the Social Security Administration owns a large block of stock, why shouldn't it get a seat on the board of directors? I'd love to see a government watchdog on the board of directors of every major enterprise in this country, and we can get that thru centralized investment of Social Security funds in stocks. But we would NOT get it thru individual investors using Social Security taxes for small individual stakes, only thru the Social Security Administration as such taking a large stake in all the major public enterprises of the Nation.
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The Republicans don't want people to know that there are two extremely simple reforms that would permanently solve the Social Security problem: (1) eliminate the cap on income that is subject to Social Security (FICA) taxation, so that every dollar the rich make is taxed just as every dollar the rest of us make is taxed; and (2) means-test Social Security and Medicare so that people who are already secure and have their own perfectly good health insurance plan in retirement would not receive anything at all from government — after all, the rich keep bitching about people 'feeding at the public trough', so why are they doing so? — and indeed empower us to give much more generous benefits to people at lower income brackets, evening things up somewhat in retirement, after a working lifetime of gross inequality. And truly, why do we have different payouts that perpetuate the inequality that people have suffered thru their entire life? If we are to have different payouts, shouldn't the poor get MORE, rather than less, than the rich?
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As regards removing the cap on FICA taxation, compare Medicare. The Social Security Administration's own website says:

Tax rates of 1.45 percent for employees and employers, each, and 2.90 percent for self-employed persons, are applied to all earnings—without a taxable maximum—under Medicare's Hospital Insurance program.

So why should FICA taxation stop at $90,000 gross income? It shouldn't. Let all those millionaires and multimillionaires and the Nation's 312 BILLIONAIRES pay FICA on every dollar they make, and the Social Security system will be rolling in dough.
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As for cutting the rich from the rolls, Republicans don't want Social Security means-tested. They want the rich to be equally entitled to receive benefits as the poorest among us. But they don't want them to receive the SAME benefits, dollar for dollar. No, they want people who have made more money throughout their working life to continue to receive more money after retirement, so they can continue to enjoy the lifestyle they have grown accustomed to. The flip side of that, of course, is that people who have scrimped and saved but still lived lives of hardship throughout their working years are to continue to have to live miserably in retirement, because the Social Security benefit they receive will not cover a life of comfort.
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Why should that be if we do not presently have individual retirement accounts, but today's retirees are paid for by today's workers? Think about it.
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What does it matter what a given individual paid into the system if s/he does not draw against that fund but against a wide pool of other people who will pay into Social Security after each of us retires? We don't draw against a credit to our account, and when that individual fund is exhausted, we're out of luck. No. The credits we are given are used only to determine how large our check is after retirement. But how is that fair? If we're not drawing against what we paid in historically, but against what others are paying in each year, currently, why should the poor receive worse benefits than the middle class and rich? And why should poor and middle-class workers today have to pay higher taxes so that people who don't need Social Security, at all, can receive money they don't need? It's the old "robbing Peter to pay Paul" thing, except with a twist: robbing poor Peter to pay rich Paul.
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So we have two moral issues of unequal treatment and disparate impact here: the poor receive less from Social Security than do the middle class and rich, so that we continue through the end of life the economic inequality and unfairness that people have been subjected to throughout their working lives. That's unfair.
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Moreover, the working poor today are required to subsidize a life of luxury for the upper middle class and rich in retirement today. They are already secure. If they already have security, why would they need Social Security?
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A person who makes $20,000 a year, before taxes, on which s/he must support a family of five, has to pay Social Security taxes on every dollar of income. That money is distributed immediately to people whose annual retirement income, before Social Security, might be $200,000. Social Security might kick in an additional $22,488 a year (the maximum benefit) — that is, more than the person paying into Social Security makes! How on Earth is that fair?
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The Republicans are always telling us what pious Christians they are, deeply concerned about "moral values". Let's think about what Jesus might say about the Republican Party's devotion to the rich above all others, their willingness to see their fellow citizens live out the end of their lives in penury rather than raise taxes on the rich.
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"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24; click here to see a satire on the left-leaning teachings of Jesus.)
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Thus has it ever been, and thus will it remain until the rich take to heart sayings like that one, "The love of money is the root of all evil" (Timothy 6:10), and "You can't take it with you" (a version of which appears at Psalms 49:17),* then start devising economic policies that do right by everybody.
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In a family, if one member is doing better than the others, a parent writing his or her will does not give that one even more. Rather, s/he gives that one less, and the others more, according to their needs. The problem, then, is that Republicans do not feel about this country, about our society, that we are one great family, in which it is important that everyone live well. That's sad.
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Jesus tried to wake people to the need to do justice to the poor, especially in this passage from Matthew 25:

31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, ... he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' 40 And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'

41 "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' 44 Then they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' 45 Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

In today's political and psychological language, Jesus required us not simply to abstain from doing evil but proactively to do good.
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What is money for? What is power for, if not to do good?
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Money, and its predecessor, barter, were designed to allow people to exchange goods and services equitably rather than just leave society barbarous and violent, with the strong simply ripping goods away from the weak and compelling labor from them by force. With barter, you could at least make some reasonable judgment as to intrinsic value. If someone offered you one chicken for 16 of your horses, you would see that such a deal would be insane for you to make. But with money, we have no real measure of intrinsic value. It's all just numbers on pieces of paper or in bank accounts. We know that because hackers have been able to create bank accounts out of the clear blue sky and fill them with imaginary numbers, which all of a sudden were regarded as real.
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The truest measure of value for living beings is how much time and effort from one's finite life it takes to acquire or achieve a thing. A poor person may work 200 hours to make $1,000. A rich person may not work so much as a second to make the same, because his or her investments yield enormous passive income and interest, for which s/he does not have to raise one little finger. Or s/he may merely have to step onto a basketball court or stage, or into the batter's box or a TV studio, to make vastly more than $1,000. So when a rich person buys something from an ordinary working person, here, in China, or in the inexpressibly wretched Third World, s/he really is offering one chicken for 16 horses.
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We've got to make economics more like fair, during people's working life to the extent possible, thru STEEPLY progressive taxation, but at least in retirement, thru a Social Security system that enables people to live in comfort and dignity.
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I'm not willing to wait for the Last Judgment for justice to be done, the meek to be admitted to Heaven and the arrogant to be cast into Hell. I don't believe in any divine Last Judgment, nor Heaven, nor Hell. I do, however, believe that the electorate has in its power Periodic Judgment, and in the next such Judgment Day, I hope that the American people will cast out the wicked and install the righteous. But if the Republicans show themselves wicked thru their cold-heartedness toward the poor and slavish obedience to the rich, then the Democrats show their wickedness thru their cold-heartedness to the very least of us, the unborn, who cannot even beg for their lives.
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Where, pray, are the righteous in politics today?
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I have not seen these points about equity and inequity (or iniquity) in the Social Security system raised by anyone else, on television, in print, anywhere. Why not?
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* In looking for the origin of the saying "You can't take it with you," I found a clever answer to people who cite Leviticus as authority for condemning homosexuality.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,519.)





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