Yves here. With yet more debt ceiling fights baked in, and the Republicans regularly using them to have a go at cutting Social Security benefits, it’s important to push back hard against the gutting of this and other social safety nets. Sadly that also entails waging war with feckless Dems.
By Sonali Kolhatkar, an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute
Inflation continues to rise in the United States. Although gas prices have recently fallen since their record high over the summer, the cost of groceries rose by 11.4 percent over the last year, and there is no expectation that they will fall back to reasonable levels. Prices overall have risen by 8.2 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index report covering September 2022 as compared to the same month last year. While most working Americans are not getting hefty wage raises to compensate for inflation, seniors will see their Social Security benefits—which are pegged to inflation—rise next year. Starting in January 2023, beneficiaries will see an 8.7 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) bump in their Social Security checks.
Conservatives are scoffing at this automated increase, as if it were a special treat that the Biden administration has cooked up to bribe older voters. Fox News reported that there was a “social media backlash” against White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain’s tweet lauding the upcoming increased COLA benefits for seniors. The outlet elevated comments by the conservative America First Policy Institute’s Marc Lotter, who retorted to Klain, “Nice try Ron. Raising benefits next year does not help seniors with the higher prices they are paying today or the higher prices they’ve been paying since you took office.”
But Social Security benefits have risen automatically with inflation since 1975 by design, precisely so that the livelihoods of seniors are not beholden to partisanship. This is an imminently sensible way to ensure that retired Americans, who spent their working lives paying Social Security taxes, can have a basic income.
If conservatives are complaining that an 8.7 percent bump is not enough to counter inflation, one might expect them to demand an even greater increase to Social Security benefits.
But, as is often the case with conservative economic logic, hypocrisy abounds. Bloomberg Government reporter Jack Fitzpatrick recently reported that several House Republicans who are vying to chair next year’s House Budget Committee if their party wins a majority in the November 2022 general elections are crafting plans for reductions, not increases. They hope to leverage negotiations on raising the 2023 debt ceiling by demanding cuts to Social Security and Medicare—programs that the GOP loves to deceptively label “entitlements.”
Fitzpatrick, using conservatives’ nakedly partisan language, said that Republican negotiators “could subsequently put major entitlement programs in play.” One of the GOP members of Congress eyeing the committee leadership, Georgia’s Buddy Carter, was more forthcoming about his plan, saying, “Our main focus has got to be on nondiscretionary—it’s got to be on entitlements.” Another Republican lawmaker, Jodey Arrington of Texas, also hoping to chair the crucial committee, understood the value of discretion when discussing cuts to programs favored by his constituents. He warned his Republican colleagues against getting too specific because “this can get so politicized.”
But Republicans have been demanding cuts to so-called entitlement programs for at least the past seven years running, in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Oddly, the Washington Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler found no evidence to back up Democratic Senator Patty Murray’s recent claim that “Republicans plan to end Social Security and Medicare if they take back the Senate.” Awarding Murray four “Pinocchios”—the Fact Checker column’s highest possible rating for lies—Kessler assured readers, saying, “Don’t worry, seniors: There is no such plan.” (In the hundreds of comments on the piece, many readers called out Kessler’s obvious service to Republicans in helping to hide their agenda.)
Social Security is one of the best, most popular government-funded programs in the nation. I recently explained its workings to my parents who emigrated from the United Arab Emirates to the U.S. a year ago. The custom they are familiar with in countries like the UAE is that of a “gratuity” or severance, paid to retiring workers—a lump-sum tip—based on their salary and number of years worked.
I explained that in contrast, U.S. workers pay a small percentage of their wages into the Social Security fund their entire working life. Upon retirement, workers draw a monthly sum based on their salary, years worked, and the current cost of living. While this may not sound as enticing as receiving a large sum of money at once, the monthly payments will never run out and last from retirement until death. My parents were duly impressed.
This year, to mark the 87th anniversary of Social Security, Data for Progress found in a poll that the program remains extremely popular and that a majority of voters want to increase benefits.
Those surveyed also worried that Congress could cut current or future benefits, or privatize the program. Most had not heard about Republican plans for cuts, however, suggesting that the efforts to hide the GOP’s real agenda have generally worked.
And, most were in favor of a very simple solution to ensure that Social Security’s funds don’t run out as revenues have dropped due to increasing inequality, and life expectancy has increased: make the wealthy pay their fair share. Social Security payroll taxes are capped at $147,000 in wages currently (and beginning in 2023 will increase a modest 9 percent to $160,200). That means those earning a million dollars a year in 2022 pay the same amount into Social Security as those earning $150,000. Removing the cap ensures that the fund will remain solvent and stable.
Social Security, in spite of some flaws, is also one of the nation’s most progressive programs, helping to further racial and gender justice among older Americans.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), “Social Security is a particularly important source of income for groups with low earnings and less opportunity to save and earn pensions, including Black and Latino workers and their families, who face higher poverty rates during their working lives and in old age.”
Furthermore, CBPP finds that “Social Security is especially important for women, because they tend to earn less than men, take more time out of the paid workforce, live longer, accumulate less savings, and receive smaller pensions.”
In spite of enduring Republican desires to cut the program, it is not nearly as generous as it ought to be. A global comparison of government retirement benefits by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2019 found that the U.S. ranked 24th on the ratio of worker benefits to earnings. This is below average for OECD countries, and lower than the benefits paid by countries like Turkey, Greece, Estonia, and Latvia, in spite of the U.S. being the richest nation in the world.
In other words, there is a basis for the conservative critique that an 8.7 percent increase in Social Security benefits slated for 2023 is insufficient. But the solution is to make benefits more generous, rather than to cut the program as Republicans aim to do.
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While we’re discussing entitlements, what about the entitlement program thinly disguised as our military and best weapons ever programs. If anything deserves a little slicing to better split the pie, the military and DOD spending sure seem likely if we want to cut expenses in a meaningful way.
Wait, we’re being told we have to keep funding the war in Ukraine. And we need more spending because China! So, ah, yeah never mind. Time to skip those three meals a day, grandpa!! Let’s try getting that down to two per day.
As a concession to seniors, the Republicans could at least allow cat food purchases with an EBT card.
Notice the deficit nor debt ceiling ever comes up during a “debate” on defense spending.
Particularly in light of the historical fact that our military hasn’t prevailed in any war since 1945.
Au contraire. We totally creamed Grenada.
Did a number on Panama and in GW1– or do turkey-shoots not count?
If only people were open to understanding how sovereign money systems actually work… SIGH…
Amen…(‘Eeek! we’re running out of money!’… a close second to ‘Eeek! the bureau of weights and measures is running out of inches!’)
Adam, that’s an awesome analogy. I am totally stealing it.
Never understood why it’s branded “entitlement” myself.
I’m listening to Frank Luntz’ “Words That Work”, wouldn’t surprise me if he had something to do with it.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-14/luntz-raises-alarm-about-election-losers-not-accepting-results
His work led to the “Death Tax” name, somehow he doesn’t see the slide into incivility as something he has anything to do with.
Best…H
An aside. I saw your campaign interview with Renee Shaw the other day. Want to wish you the best of luck. I’d vote for you but I’m over here in Andy Barr land.
I have several degrees in English, and I hate yahoos like Frank Luntz.
Except Luntz makes me think why the liberals have never had someone like him for decades.
As this piece in Forbes says
The Social Security Administration itself refers to Social Security as an “entitlement” because that’s what it is. The word has been twisted to connote some kind of unearned benefit, which is not at all what it means.
Isn’t private property then, from a societal perspective, also an entitlement?
“I explained that in contrast, U.S. workers pay a small percentage of their wages into the Social Security fund their entire working life.”
It’s NOT such a small percentage of our wages … it’s 6.2% each for employees and employers (and self employed pay both halves.) That’s a 12.4% contribution for every dollar we earn. And since we know that many – maybe most – Americans have little to nothing left over at the end of a pay period, the 12.4% of their earnings (a case can be made that the employer contribution is part of the employee’s earnings) is VERY significant and – I insist – not SMALL at all.
I think it’s a huge mistake to gloss over our contributions as if they are insignificant to us. They are NOT insignificant and it’s insulting to imply that they are.
Ya, I think that payroll taxes are bigger than income taxes these days.
For many low income workers it most certainly is.
My recollection from college Econ classes is “…assume (ok, please let me finish… )
“assume a 10% savings rate…”
My recollection from my two stints as an employee with 401K savings benefits, a generous company contributed a match, capping at 6%, the other at 5%. So, arguably, SS contributions are every bit as significant as private sector.
Let’s not omit that contributions to 401K were deducted from gross pay, so end of year gross wages at tax time were reduced. Tilt the table toward the gaping infinite maw of the financial sector.
The biggest difference: The Fed and Wall Street are steadfastly backstopping the financial markets that underpin private retirement accounts, and the public retirement system that is Social Security is constantly under threat and attack. Mostly by congress critters who are bought and funded by private sector greaseballs that want every penny of savings in their realm and domain.
70-ish percent of Americans have less that $1,000 in savings or investments. Their sole ‘savings’ is in the form of Social Security, the gold-plated brass ring and watch that we get at 65…oh, wait…
…66..67..68…69…70…71…72.
The increasing retirement age in a recession and declining longevity in the Plague era… oh it’s an actuary’s DREAM. And we still bother to VOTE, many voting against self-interest and their elderly neighbor?
Gawd.
I’m all for taxing the rich, but considering the benefits are also capped this doesnt strike me as “fair”. As other commenters have noted — we could also just print the money. That would be fairer and recieve less political pushback/be less likely to rolled back
The only reason the payroll tax was added in the first place was for political reasons. It has nothing to do with “getting out what you put in”. It could be funded through any tax structure.
I generally agree that Republicans have been consistent “bad guys” on Social Security, but how can we ignore Slick Willie wanting to privatize SS, or the Obama Boehner “Grand Bargain” to use chained CPI as a means to cut benefits? Democrats also have an enduring desire to trash Social Security. The fact Biden hasn’t proposed similar cuts only speaks of their political vulnerability in Congress. At least republicans clearly state their intentions.
Slick Willie also ran a surplus that caused a recession and Obama Boehner (and every President) has subscribed to the Big Lie in economics that federal taxes fund federal spending.
Occasionally, the truth slips out, however:
Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”
Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”
Quote from former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke when he was on 60 Minutes:
Scott Pelley: Is that tax money that the Fed is spending?
Ben Bernanke: It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.
Statement from the St. Louis Fed:
“As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.”
(Every federal spending cut demanded by conservatives is designed to widen the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest, while the few federal spending increases backed by the conservatives are designed to reward and protect the rich.)
Joe Biden hasn’t proposed similar cuts recently, but over the years he has been a leader in the Democrat party in proposing cuts. Just one example – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np37I1Clubw
There have been grumblings from Biden shortly after he took office about reviving Obama’s Grand Bargain, and I am not sure if he and the Democrats gave up on that. They might be waiting until after the midterms to roll it out after the damage has already been done in the form of the Democrats losing Congress.
It would destroy the Democrats’ prospects in 2024, during a recession induced by rising interest rates, but such is the cost of doing business to the Democratic Party. The Democrats have been trying to get rid of Social Security for years, much like their Republican counterparts. Also, much like the Republicans, Democrats see austerity as the answer to every economic issue, and the recession would provide the perfect excuse to call for more “belt-tightening” and cut Social Security.
Republicans might come up with unpopular and disastrous ideas, but the Democrats are very adept at taking those same Republican proposals and implementing them during their political terms.
Yes, Biden is on record (c-span) saying he wants to cut Social Sec. This was before he became president. I don’t trust the dems or the republicans on safety net issues. We spend billions of $$ on weapons and aid and no one screams at that. Most people don’t understand how a sovereign currency works.
Thank you. But if the Repubs, but only some of them, consistently obsess over “entitlement” cuts the Dems consistently exaggerate the possibility of that ever happening. As you say the only time it might have happened was under Dem Clinton but Monica saved us. And Klain taking credit for the automatic increase (that was necessary in part due to Biden policies) is tacky. This political football is bipartisan, not unlike the never ending abortion debate.
People here are already expressing a ‘Ju jitsu’ talking point where Republicans eventually destroy social security as it is today, and the blame falls to theoretical Democratic Presidential history! Unbelievable! One should not forget those monies on payroll tax will not necessarily disappear but go to increased withholding requirement esp. under Republican POTUS’s. Btw, once SSI is gone-the ‘pull yourself-up by-the-bootstraps’ 401k’s, Ira’s, annuities. company common shares-on & on will all be [totally] dependent on an unregulated CASSINO Wall St. marketplace the likes of what has never been seen before. Good luck in voting Republican if you’re not very rich with an Army of Accountants & Lawyers…
If Social Security benefits are cut in a meaningful way one can be sure that Democrats will be ones pushing the ball over the goal line. They have always been the ones willing to make “deals” with Republicans. If Biden is alive, runs in 2024, and is reelected you can expect him to be agreeable to cuts to SS. If Pelosi is still alive and House Speaker you can expect her to push the required legislation through the House.
Somewhere on NC in the last few days I saw a convincing arguement that indexing benefits protects those dependent on Washington from the consequences of inflation while leaving those not dependent on DC who get no indexing to face the consequences. Thus only a very high level of Federal Reserve intervention will work, which means a recession.
Now we get the left “We must index” response from this article.
This seems to me to be a contradiction.
If the Fed is dead set on raising interest rates until inflation drops to 2 percent, it’s going to get ugly for a lot of people. If that’s the case, hopefully there would be income protection for those most vulnerable, a large number of whom are lower-income retirees, especially (as noted in the article) African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Pacific Islanders, and women of all races. So indexing is a good thing, and by the way their spending power is pretty limited. If that means the Fed would have to raise interest rates a little more, than so be it. So in that sense, the argument you cite (which I didn’t see) is correct, but the policy of indexing is also correct.
Of course, raising interest rates disproportionately affects lower-wage workers and their families (again with racial and gender inequities), not the people who are doing the big spending. And when inflation is mostly caused by supply chain issues and the huge increase in corporate profits, interest rates are especially the wrong tool to use.
It’s an excellent article but for one small error. FICA does not fund Social Security.
The dirty little secret of federal financing is: Federal taxes do not fund federal spending. In fact, all dollars coming to the Treasury are destroyed upon receipt.
To pay your FICA tax, dollars are taken from your or your employer’s checking account. Those dollars come from the M1 money supply measure.
When the dollars reach the Treasury, they cease to be part of any money supply measure. They effectively are destroyed. There is no money supply measure for federal dollars because the federal government has infinite dollars. Mathematically, X + infinity = Infinity. No change. Your dollars cease to exist.
The federal government pays its bills with newly created dollars, ad hoc.
The purpose of federal taxes is not to pay for federal spending but:
1) To control the economy by discouraging what the government doesn’t like and rewarding via tax breaks what the government wishes to encourage.
2) To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring taxes to be paid for dollars.
3) To discourage the public from asking for benefits by claiming they are “unaffordable.” (This last is on behalf of the rich, who want to widen the gap between the rich and the rest. The gap is what makes them rich, and the wider the gap, the richer they are.)
On October 1972, the government went off the gold standard and became fully Monetarily Sovereign. It then could eliminate all taxes and still continue spending, forever.
The current disgrace not only is the small size of the SS benefits but the fact that the government levies a taxes on those benefits after you ostensibly have paid for them via FICA. That’s really nuts.
Could go on spending what forever, though? The fact that a dollar has any effect on people’s behavior derives from the belief of those people that, at some point, they will get something for their dollars. That something has to be produced somehow — by labor, usually — and it has to be allocated somehow to the dollar holders. It is true the government, with its monopoly of violence, can expropriate value or use other coercive means to obtain it, but slavery is usually unpopular unless it can be visited upon a despised minority. When belief in the monetary unit fails…. but you know the story.
Thanks Starry,
The federal debt has risen from $40 Billion in 1940 to about $25 Trillion now — something like a 6,000% increase — and in the intervening years, it repeatedly has been called a “tick time bomb.”
That’s a huge increase and 82 years of ticking, but still no explosion.
Do you still use dollars? I do. I even save them for the future.
Taking the histories of previous “Reform” movements into account, Civil Rights had the Black Panthers, LGBTQXYZ had the Stonewall Brigade, the Unions had the Redneck Army, the WW-1 veterans had the Bonus March, etc., etc. we Seniors need to become radicalized. Indeed, we need to adopt some of the strategies that made Predatory Capitalism ‘great,’ such as “move fast and break things.”
Curiously enough, at the beginning, the Tea Party movement began to run out of the control of it’s ‘handlers,’ and was inching towards some Modus Vivendi with Social Security and Medicare. Considering the age groups most represented within the Tea Party, such was to be expected. No matter how hard the movement’s ‘handlers’ tried to shift them, the Tea Party rank and file consistently supported Social Security by wide margins.
Someone in “power” must have been paying attention to the Tea Party and it’s evolution. Today, evidence shows that efforts to shift actual, on the ground opinions and attitudes has made way for the deployment of a Big Lie strategy in most political arenas. The attitude inside the “Ruling Elites” now is: “Who cares what the groundlings think?” “We tell them what to think through ‘messaging’ and the ‘narrative.'” Thus, the next step has been taken. Now the ‘Ruling Elites’ act as if the Big Lies were facts.
By suggesting the “radicalization” of the Grey Panthers et. al. I am merely pointing out a basic fact of social dynamics. The “Ruling Elites” have lost touch with observable reality. The next step is for that observable reality to step up and smack them in the face, hard.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I still remember the “Get the government’s hands off my Social Security” sign.
Waiting to see what the amount of the Medicare contribution deducted from SS.
Currently $170.10
Previously $144.60
Will it exceed $200 per month?
Not once United Health and Blue Cross and Big Medicine have their say!
Next year’s premium will be $164.90.
Last year’s large increase was due in part to a new Alzheimer drug that was going to cost over $50,000 per year. It turned out that the drug was not that effective and the drug company dropped the price.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcarlson/2022/10/11/medicare-premiums-drop-in-2023-but-thats-not-the-full-story/?sh=221e8dee41c4
If you live in a high cost state and are paid accordingly your Medicare premiums are double – $170.10 + another $170.10. That’s considered the “progressive” approach. Despite the fact that the government’s idea of a high income doesn’t match the reality of the cost of living in some geographic areas. Medicare premiums in coastal California are exorbitant.
“…the conservative critique that an 8.7 percent increase in Social Security benefits slated for 2023 is insufficient…” — this critique seems a dangerous strategy. If 8.7 percent increase in Social Security benefits is too small, what does that suggest about wages?
No way will they do anything to increase wages. What will happen is that they will use it as hay to sell a new tax cut. Everything can be solved by tax cuts to a Republican!
Judging by comments I’ve seen over the years, going back to when people wrote letters to the editors of media actually printed on paper, I’ve gathered that the general belief that taxes fund Social Security gives the (assumed to be) stupid public the idea that they own the money contributed and makes them more ready to defend it from predators — and here I refer to not just Republicans. For believers, it’s not a handout miraculously created by their betters; it’s their money. Maybe this myth is not such a bad thing.
I remember running across a reference suggesting one of the craftsmen of Social Security deliberately required individual contributions as a way to create the myth among recipients that ” it’s their money.” I could not find that reference. However in the search I made a very cursory skim over Domhoff’s article: “How Corporate Moderates Created the Social Security Act (…And Then Tried to Undermine It Later)” https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/social_security.html
I ran across these nuggets:
“In the case of old-age pensions, the draft plan embodied three basic principles that the corporate moderates insisted upon based on several years of experience with private pension plans, especially in conjunction with the efforts of the major life insurance companies (Klein 2003). First, the level of benefits must be tied to salary level, thus preserving and reinforcing the values established in the labor market. Second, unlike the case in many countries, there would be no government contributions from general tax revenues, if at all possible. Instead, there would be a separate tax for old-age pensions, which would help to limit the size of benefits. Third, there had to be both employer and employee contributions to the system, which would limit the tax payments by the corporations.”
“To keep taxes on both employers and employees as low as possible, they said there would be a need for a government contribution from general tax revenues beginning in 1965 and lasting for another 15 years, unless payroll taxes were increased (Witte 1963, pp. 147-149). When Roosevelt grasped the details of this funding plan several months later, just before the proposal was about to be sent to Congress, he insisted that payroll taxes should be set at a higher rate to maintain his rhetorical fiction that the funding came from “contributions,” not taxes. The result would be a very large reserve fund, which neither the corporate moderates nor the liberals ”
I came away from my quick skim of Domhoff with a very strong impression there has been a sea-change in the thinking of what Domhoff terms corporate moderates. [Note: The discussion of Social Security benefits beginning in the section “Big gains in the Nixon years, then trouble” covers issues related to automatic cost-of-living adjustments added to compensate for the inflation of that time.]
It is clear that Republicans plan to hold Social Security hostage using the debt ceiling negotiations if they take back the House. Democrats have at least two options to prevent cuts in benefits.
The first option is for Democrats to pass a large increase in the debt ceiling in the lame duck session after the election. They could increase the debt ceiling by $5 or $10 trillion on a party line vote.
Second, President Biden could mint a trillion dollar platinum coin. Last year Janet Yellen came out against the idea, but if the choice is default and or Social Security cuts, the coin idea makes sense.
https://www.vox.com/22711346/trillion-dollar-coin-mintthecoin-debt-ceiling-beowulf
Biden can also betray us!
See my comment.
“could” but won’t
What do you think the chances are the Dems or Biden will do any of what you suggested? I say the chances are much, much higher that they find a way to “work” with the Repubs to slash benefits at the very first opportunity.
On May 3rd of this year, Biden appointed Andrew Briggs to a seat on the social security advisory board. Mr. Briggs has been a longtime advocate of social security privatization. So while Biden is all in on privatization of Medicare he is also on board with the privatization of social security. You can always count on Biden to stab us in the back!
https://www.levernews.com/biden-taps-anti-social-security-ideologue-to-oversee-program/
Biden can also betray us!
See my comment.
I don’t expect to be able to live in this economy on social security, and from experience, a life of precarity and mere survival sucks: I am actively exploring my options.
Would be nice to see some analysis on life expectancies for different income percentiles. My father died at 63 before he could even start collecting SS benefits
So did my Dad. He died on the job at 59 and Mom had to sue the County for his death benefits. They claimed, straight faced, that he was driving the County truck “on his own time,” and so she owed them for a wrecked truck. This continued for over two years before one of Dad’s old mates came up with a way of proving that Dad was driving on County business when he died. The Judge in the case was so disgusted at the County’s case that he publically said that he wanted to award damages to Mom. Still, it was a years salary.
Calling Social Security a ‘spending program’ is part of the conservative big lie. It is a payback program and that is why it is so popular. I believe it is also an inflation control program to tax out of circulation the dollars (credit) the banks create loaning beyond their reserves. A financial transaction tax would also tax out of circulation some of the funny money banks create. Use it to fund medicare for all if it needs funding. The 5 million jobs the free trade agreements eliminated reduced social security and medicare funding as Chinese workers don’t pay into SS and medicare. The same crowd that want to cut SS and medicare also support free trade.
‘Entitlements’ isn’t a GOP word. I first heard it, in the sense of a big problem which needs fixing, from Barak Obama, a community organizer from Chicago, during his inspiring Democrat convention speech.
So…what should Social Security really be paying to survive in this economy? If there’s an answer in this post I’ve missed it.
It all really depends on our definition of “survive.” Technically speaking, homeless people who frequent food pantries and panhandle for dollars on the street corner are “surviving.” Look to Charles Dickens for a pretty good description of the world that Neoliberals want to return us to.
Well, okay, but it’s Sonali Kolhatkar’s post so I’d settle for her answer based on her definition of “survive.” (And, then again, I’d surmise that mere “survival” is the bare minimum so, really, it would be better if Social Security benefits were somewhat above that.)
Think about how the federal government defines “poverty”, and then you will have your answer.
SS and Medicare were passed at a time when Senior Citizens lived in extreme hardship and poverty. They knew the importance of the program. Do the current Seniors understand this? One does not see much outrage from all them in Florida res their voting choices. They keep sending GOPers to Congress and Senate and their own state Government. I mean, why vote for someone like Rick Scott or even De Santis? How about Trump? One is forced to conclude that these Senior Citizens are as clueless as the rest of the age groups when it comes to voting against their own interests. Methinks that the coming Civil War will end both SS and Medicare. If the nation splits into Red and Blue halves, does anyone think these programs will be retained in the Blue half? The Blues will most likely be backed by most of the Armed Forces and the Corporate Dems. A la Rahm, they will immediately seize the chance to declare mandatory austerity to ‘heal the nation’ and end the programs ASAP. My wife and I are seriously planning for this eventuality and seeing to buy some property in a Blue state because we live in a Red State (although moderate). We expect to forfeit all our property when the bullets start to fly. A house in Vermont might be a safe haven to flee to. Citizens United was a game changer and till we have CU we don’t have Democracy. The Corporate Dems have been unable to lift their heads from the corporate feeding trough since the 1970s after Al From and Tony Coelho and the rest of his DLC cronies threw out the real Dems and replaced them with corporate ‘Blue Dogs’. All debate and ifs and buts and wherefores and whatnots are a much ‘chasing of the wind’.