Contrast Paul's exhortation to avoid idleness with an opinion piece published in AOL news by the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka.
His thesis:
"This Labor Day, more of our grandparents may be working a cashier's line, waiting tables or preparing lessons for the first day of school. Remember those happy TV commercials of seniors having the time of their lives, retiring in comfort and dignity after a lifetime of work? They're a dying dream for most older Americans. And that's something we can't let happen."
Lets set aside the fact that he just said that we should base our dreams and expectations on 60 second ads and move on to the real issues with his article, which there are many:
Firstly, it is NOT a tragedy that a whopping one third of people over 65 still work to pay for their grocieries/golf games/bingo/bridge/cable/mortgages/rent/heat/electricity/or even perscripton drugs. The rest of us do it and no one is sitting around feeling sorry for us.
Secondly, young people are not loosing sleep at night worrying about politicians cutting their Social Security. None of us expect it to be there because we know that the system will implode in 8 or so years. Rather we are up at night wondering how to make ends meet when so much of our income is being siphoned away by Social Security. Seriously, we get pissed when we look at our pay stubs.
Thirdly, no matter how many Americans don't want to see benefits cut even fewer want to see taxes increased.
He conveniantly leaves out how much money we already spend on Social Security and its brothers Medicaid and Medicare.(See Figure one, but be warned, it is shocking).
I could go on and on and on but that would take quite awhile, and I don't think I could avoid being snarky. So I will say only this: I am not so extreme that I believe that we should simply abolish social security or medicare/medicaid - however we have to be responsible. It is not responsible to allow perfectly healthy people to spend 10 to 20 years of their lives in idleness on MY dime. We can discuss what to do with irresponsible or unlucky people who have become too sick to work, but the healthy people will not be harmed by paying for their own livelihoods.
And if Mr. Trumka has a problem with that he is more than welcome to take his hugely inflated salary and do something about it and ask that his friends do the same. But I do not have a hugely inflated salary, and I would ask him to kindly keep his paws off of it.
Firstly, it is NOT a tragedy that a whopping one third of people over 65 still work to pay for their grocieries/golf games/bingo/bridge/cable/mortgages/rent/heat/electricity/or even perscripton drugs. The rest of us do it and no one is sitting around feeling sorry for us.
Secondly, young people are not loosing sleep at night worrying about politicians cutting their Social Security. None of us expect it to be there because we know that the system will implode in 8 or so years. Rather we are up at night wondering how to make ends meet when so much of our income is being siphoned away by Social Security. Seriously, we get pissed when we look at our pay stubs.
Thirdly, no matter how many Americans don't want to see benefits cut even fewer want to see taxes increased.
He conveniantly leaves out how much money we already spend on Social Security and its brothers Medicaid and Medicare.(See Figure one, but be warned, it is shocking).
I could go on and on and on but that would take quite awhile, and I don't think I could avoid being snarky. So I will say only this: I am not so extreme that I believe that we should simply abolish social security or medicare/medicaid - however we have to be responsible. It is not responsible to allow perfectly healthy people to spend 10 to 20 years of their lives in idleness on MY dime. We can discuss what to do with irresponsible or unlucky people who have become too sick to work, but the healthy people will not be harmed by paying for their own livelihoods.
And if Mr. Trumka has a problem with that he is more than welcome to take his hugely inflated salary and do something about it and ask that his friends do the same. But I do not have a hugely inflated salary, and I would ask him to kindly keep his paws off of it.
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| Borrowed from: http://www.whitcam.com/research/archives/248 |
2 comments:
War Resisters League parses the numbers a bit differently than the OMB. Check this out and see what you think.
http://www.warresisters.org/files/FY2011piechart.pdf
I like it :) Makes me feel good to see that the government is spending at least half it's budget on two thirds or more of its responsibility :)
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