Are the baby boomers going bust?
A new report by the Government Accountability Office released Tuesday shows that the savings and overall financial stability of Americans older than 55 has dropped dramatically in recent decades, leaving a worrisome situation as the ranks of the elderly are set to increase even more in the years ahead.
Are you talking about corporate or people welfare? Can you write off the interest payment on your home?
Save that tripe. Most modern countries provide pensions for those over 60. Jobs are disappearring and the pigs t the top have extracted more than enough money from our labor to insure that we are not left to the streets when we are older. Less than half of what is given to oil, agribsusiness and military ventures would more than cover the costs as would simply scrapping the cap on Social Security deductions. Not only should Social Security be expanded. we should have a minimum income tied to the poverty level.
Social Security like the Post Office is not broke/ Both these have been “hammered” at with lies and distortions because there are some that don’t believe in a social safety net nor unions and they want to break the backs of the people in order to enrich a few. But the lies for the last 40 years like “welfare queens driving cadillacs” has been hammered into people minds when there was no truth to it. Lazy druggies spending my money.
The corporations are the new welfare queens eating up tax dollars thru so many loopholes, subsidies and lawyers/accountants setting up off shore havens for their billions. These people no longer are job creators, they are takers. Walmart family business does not pay it workers enough of a living wage so us taxpayers pick up the tap in food stamps, healthcare and housing subsidies.
I get sick and tired of people who would rather demonized their neighbor than CEO’s make 500 times what they pay their worker or is it 5,000 times.
I saw the crash of 2008 coming and divested everything from Wall Street, paid my taxes on it and put in CD’s earning nothing, all the while fat cats doing nano speed trades driving up prices of commodities are making billions. I’ve lost thousands in interest earnings that I had planned for my retirement and many more little investors and retirees lost thousands from their retirement. Wall Street is ripping us off and running the show in Washington DC. Enough, I don’ earn even a cost of living interest on he money I’ve put in SS for the last 50 plus years. Compounding interest theory learned in the 50’s sure went out the window??
I didn’t see the crash coming.However I didn’t panic,left my money in the market
and now my IRA is UP 40% since 2007.
Seeing how the 1% are making great strides in achieving a “total income transfer system” UPWARD, Sanders and other serious progressives need to demand a total income transfer system downward.
The extreme right wing can only be reined in by an extreme left wing. Decades of centrists have enabled the right wing’s expansion at the expense of the left.
Chicken and wine sure is fine. You got yours and I got mine. But what about the half of seniors who’ve got squat?
A majority of USAn families see all their earnings used up in rent, food utilities, medical insurance, and the enormous amount of gasoline they burn travelling to their far-flung multiple low-wage jobs. They have no money in your fucking vile capitalist “market” OK???
MMinLamesa,
Social Security is NOT Bankrupt! It is completely solvent, because unlike all other government welfare programs, like war spending and Oil Subsidies, SS HAS NEVER BORROWED A SINGLE PENNY.
Repukes like you, who don’t give a chit about people sleeping in the streets right now, and who aren’t willing to pay the same percentage as poor people, are pretending to care about the expected Social Security shortfall in 2037. That’s right genius, if we do nothing at all to Social Security, it will be fine until 2037, and then it will still pay out 80 cents on the dollar.
That’s better than handing it over to Wall Street to gamble with. That’s better than letting this corrupt government fix it like they did the bank bailouts.
SS has always been an income transfer system by design. As FICA payments go in to the trust fund, benefits (and SS is not just a retirement program it is a disability benefit program too) go out. But if you mean that it might become a redistribution program (by lifting the cap and also making the tax rate progressive) that sounds great to me.
Consider the alternative - if we continue on the path that you or the capitalist bosses you are trolling on here for, the poor will eventually rise up line you all up, and put bullets in you and your friends. An let me be entirely clear to you and the moderator - this is not at all a terroristic threat - it is a lesson and warning from history. Remember 1789; remember 1917. Also look at modern-day Syria and Iraq and West Africa. The young men who fill the ranks of the savage nihilistic D’aesh (ISIL) and Boko Haram are mostly disempowered and desperate workers. Scratch beneath their religious veneer and one finds that they are a terribly dysfunctional, misguided and violent manifestation of class/anti-imperialist struggle, but class struggle nonetheless.
Sanders “flaws” are his support for war and his support for apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Both of these “flaws” involve the deaths of masses of human beings. If that’s something you can overlook, then you need to examine your moral compass.
Yes, yes, yes…
I have argued that possibility of continuing war and military pork (F-35) myself. It’s a gamble. But you know it’s world war if either Jeb Bush or Hillary “it’s time to bomb Iran” are elected.
Right?
Keep in mind, Bernie was about the only one, along with the crotchety sen from West Virgina, Bryd, and Compton’s Cynthany McKiney to vote against the Iraq War (or at least to argue against it; if memory serves; I think he was elected after the vote.)
And your comments about Israeli genocide that I have to pay for are dead-acurate. But no candidate, that I am aware of, pledges to get rid of that. So your high-bar for a moral candidate, is higher than Everest, and cannot be attained in this AIPAC system.
Which is why I’ve been boycotting the whole election system for the last ten years. But if they don’t meet your standards… LOWER your standards. We are in the Dark Ages of torture, serfs and Kings. We don’t get a good candidate like Bernie very often. I can’t be a single-issue voter like you. I have kids that won’t survive in a bush or clinton world.
I will not vote for clinton once bernie gives up. But maybe he’ll be secretary of state, and can defuse the war hawks some…
The corporate propaganda machine’s plan is to repeat the social security broke mantra long enough for enough Americans to believe it to the point that they tell their congresscritter to bag the whole program, thereby enabling the politicians to divert the money to expand corporate welfare programs.
This is the second thread today that this troll is infesting. All pure wingnut boilerplate.
That might have worked if the Wall St dregs hadn’t blown everything up in 2008, and yes, I realize Wall St has recovered – thanks to TRILLIONS from we taxpayers – but those who had 401Ks still haven’t, and they probably never will since another implosion is on its way.
Tell me something, please.
Even if he does want to bankrupt the system, how the hell is he going to get elected-- in THIS country, in THIS time-- if he comes out publicly and says so? If you really don’t think the system is salvageable (and, to tell you the truth, I’m not sure whether it is or not) and you can’t offer anything constructive, at least don’t try to tear down this man, who seems to be making an attempt at improving things.
The problem with so many of the people who post here is that they-- you, in particular, at this moment (and I’m sorry if you feel like I am making an example of you personally; I do respect your position and agree with it’s sentiments)-- cannot temper their ideals with any practical sense.
I suggest you go back to the time BEFORE Social Security as an example of exactly what a farce capitalism was.
50 percent of Children in poverty.
80 percent of seniors in poverty.
Average salary was 450.00$$ a year. Average includes the salaries of the very wealthy meaning most people were making substantially less. A nurse as example made 200 dollars a year.
The typical work week was 9 hours a day 6 days a week. There were no vacations meaning to get that 200 dollars for a years work that Nurse worked 2808 hours. That is about 7 cents per hour meaning to buy a carton of eggs the Nurse had to work 4 hours. (a dozen eggs cost 26 cents).
Only 40 percent of Children finished school. The rest dropped out so as to work at ages as young as 7 in factories. They often worked 10 hour days many losing hands and limbs working in textile mills with others breathing in toxix fumes on factory floors dying at the age of 20.
So back to the point. If A Nurse is making 200$$ and afte all of her costs for rent and food and clothing , just how much was “left over” to invest or save so as to protect them in their old age under that “Glorius” system of capitalism?
The socialism that exists under the current order is the only thing that is civilized, rational or sane about the entire mess and the people that want to return to some golden age before “socialism” are quite frankly delusional.
Bernie supports Israel. I’m not clear if that means he supports apartheid or ethnic cleansing. Unless you believe that anyone who supports Israel supports those things. I don’t support Israel, but I’ll support Bernie despite his warts. Like I support Elizabeth Warren, who also “supports” Israel. You picks yer battles.
