Monday, June 20, 2011
A real plan to actually bolster Social Security
Not to "save" it by a death of a thousand cuts as our current overpaid and undercompassionate legislators would have us endure, but actually increase it to provide some proper support for the elderly.
AS a labor lawyer I cringe when Democrats talk of “saving” Social Security. We should not “save” it but raise it. Right now Social Security pays out 39 percent of the average worker’s preretirement earnings. While jaws may drop inside the Beltway, we could raise that to 50 percent. We’d still be near the bottom of the league of the world’s richest countries — but at least it would be a basement with some food and air. We have elderly people living on less than $10,000 a year. Is that what Democrats want to “save”?As most working Americans since the introduction of Anarcho-Reganism have had their pensions stolen from them for the benefit of the wealthy, the ideas of Thomas Geoghegan are the ultimate in fairness. They require a level of political courage not seen since Harry Truman as well as a massive emergency reduction in the level of national stupidity. Neither is likely in our lifetimes without a revolution.
“But we can’t afford it!” Oh, come on: We have a federal tax rate equal to nearly 15 percent of our G.D.P. — far below the take in most wealthy countries. Let’s wake up: the biggest crisis we face is that most of us have nothing meaningful saved for retirement. I know. I started my career wanting to be a pension lawyer. In the 1970s, lawyers like me expected there to be big pots of private pensions for hourly workers. By the 1980s, as factories closed, I was filing hopeless lawsuits to claw back bits and pieces of benefits. Now there are even fewer bits and pieces to get.
A recent Harris poll found that 34 percent of Americans have nothing saved for retirement — not even a hundred bucks. In this lost decade, that percentage is sure to go up.
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