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after meeting those responsibilities, finally started putting aside every cent you possibly could for retirement, today, right now, in this Republican economy, you are getting maybe at most 4% return on your savings -- and inflation is eating it up. Your monthly "earnings" are next to nothing.
Ms. Hoover lives in a bubble. She does not live in the world of the average American.
If you earn just enough to get by during your working yearas, you cannot save. Over your lifetime, the percentage of your salary that pays for your share of Social Security buys you more value than you put in.
If you earn more than just enough to get by, you most likely buy a house and pay for your children's education. You really don't set much aside for retirement until after your children are through school, you begin to reap the benefits of an aged mortgage in low monthly payments compared to your income and you can save.
When you get about 55, you reach the danger age in terms of keeping a job. Unless your profession or skill is in huge demand, younger workers are more desirable to employers. If you are displaced from your job for any reason (and many, many Americans have been displaced over the last 20 years at this age), you have a very hard time finding another one. Retraining programs are pretty useless once you are 55 or over. The likelihood that you will get another job with that pays enough to save in a meaningful way is very slight.
Once you are over 65, your perception and reaction times (to say nothing of your energy level and appearance) begin to slow or diminish (can happen earlier). Your judgment, especially about likely human behavior, may improve if you are lucky. But perception, memory and speed, enthusiasm and good looks are what employers value in their employees, so you become even less desirable to employers than you were at 55.
This is the reality that Ms. Hoover, living in her comfortable social and economic cocoon, does not understand. She also does not understand -- because she has probably never lived in a society that is more traditional such as in Eastern Europe or the so-called third world, that, before and without Social Security (and even with its equivalent in poor countries), children care for their parents. Children give up a bedroom, buy and cook the food, wash the clothes, do everything for their parents. This is the traditional way of caring for the elderly. That is why, in some countries, parents want to have as many children as they can and view babies as such a blessing. The babies will care for them as they age.
Ms. Hoover needs to study the relationships between children and their parents in traditional societies. Everything revolves around land ownership and the transmission of title to land from one generation to the next. (There are other patterns such as those in tribal societies that are not relevant to Ms. Hoover's individualistic views.) That is what keeps kids in line and motivates them to care for their parents.
In today's mega-urban society, parents do not possess title to property that has significant value to the children. Even if you own stocks, you can't keep a milk cow or plant a garden on them. There would be no motivation for children to take care of their parents. Roosevelt's Social Security program was the reaction to urbanization and the economic reality of the increasingly industrial society in which Americans found themselves.
When the Republicans talk about Social Security privatization, they are not thinking about the urban poor. They are just planning to give elderly working class people and the urban poor the crumbs of welfare -- means based -- intrusive -- gotcha schemes that would deprive the elderly of respect and dignity in their final years. Means based "help" would condemn millions of elderly people to lives terrorized by fear of making mistakes in filling out forms. It would be an absolute nightmare. Do you want to see increased depression and suicides among the elderly? Just privatize Social Security.
Further -- Cenk, if elderly people are not starving, its thanks to food stamps not to Social Security. The big threat to some of my older friends is not starvation but homelessness. Their Social Security checks are not big enough to cover the cost of housing, utilities and the other necessities of life. They may be getting just over $1000 per month. Some less. The Bush administration has not increased Social Security benefits to match the rate of inflation on the kinds of things that the elderly buy. Lower prices on electronic paraphernalia really don't help folks on Social Security at all.
Another problem is that elderly people generally are not able to handle complicated financial affairs. Investments are way beyond most of the elderly people I know.
I have a friend who will not tell me how old she is. She is living off interest from savings and investments and makes very little money. The IRS claims she owes some huge amount in taxes. The IRS has to be mistaken. Nevertheless they have levied on her. My friend does not have a clue as to what to do and cannot afford a tax lawyer. It's really a mess. She is in a constant state of anxiety over this. I have advised her to contact a tax attorney, but, of course, the Republicans have so reduced funding for free and low-cost legal services that it is unlikely that she will find any help that she can afford.
Ms. Hoover seems obsessed with abstract theory. She is way out of touch with reality. Numbers do not tell the whole story.
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