July 29, 2011
Older Americans do not intend to ruin America,
but as a group, that’s what they’re about.
Robert J. Samuelson,
Why are we in this debt fix? It’s the elderly, stupid.
Washington Post, July 28, 2011
Answer: The Bucket. Mr. Samuelson, a right-wing economist, in yesterday’s Washington Post POSTOPINIONS column didn’t bury the lede: Why are we in this debt fix? It’s the elderly, stupid. This (unfortunately) memorable title tells you where this is going, and Samuelson does not disappoint, except one does walk away from his screed a bit more disappointed than usual in how right-wingers think. They relish attacking those who live one crisis away from poverty. Samuelson gives those weakened geriatric gray hairs a good beatdown, like Seinfeld‘s Kramer when he thrashed those prepubescent youngsters in the karate dojo, “I’m dominating the dojo. I’m class champion!” Or the man who plotted to throw his mother off a train, but in that case, decided against it. Samuelson did not.
Jihad Grandpas & Grammas
You may not have known that your seemingly sweet Granny and Gramps were on a jihad bent on burying you and their other children and grandkids under mountains of nationalized debt. I would’ve never suspected my own grandparents, they were always good for a hug and a cookie. (There are exceptions, however. My Aunt Ruth, for example, for my ninth birthday, gave me the 670 page 1955 edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage. Obviously, by that act alone, she proved that she’d do anything to anyone. Thus, she, now at 89 years, remains suspect of burying us all under mountains of public debt.)
Samuelson’s point is obvious, a lot of those rampaging elders are gaming the system, many do not need the benefits they receive, especially from Social Security and Medicare. He ignores the fact that a national social welfare program ought to embrace all the elderly; after all, well-off elders may, during their retirement, lose everything. (And don’t be fooled, Samuelson believes that poor Americans in any age group don’t deserve their benefits either.) Statistics show that the majority of elders need social security to live any kind of decent life at all. Medicare to live a healthy life at all.
Of course, Obama and the Democrats are Samuelson’s villains de jour, but he includes his own companions:
“the shunning [of even discussing entitlement cuts] is bipartisan. Tea Party advocates broadly deplore government spending without acknowledging that most of it goes for popular Social Security and Medicare.”
Thus he proves that he is worse than Tea Partiers. He forgets that the vast majority of retirement aged Tea Partiers collect Social Security and Medicare, (rightfully) believe they earned it, are therefore “entitled” to it, and would smack you with their canes should you try to even discuss cutting benefits. Of course, they also believe that other groups of elderly persons do not deserve what they have; funny how that works, eh? Samuelson doesn’t understand politics very well, doe he?
It’s the Social Contract
The social contract which we have includes income and health security, and yet does not eviscerate free enterprise. It’s benefits are for all citizens. Samuelson is no friend of our social contract:
“By now, it’s obvious that we need to rewrite the social contract that, over the past half-century, has transformed the federal government’s main task into transferring income from workers to retirees.”
To him, and the GOP/TP when it suits them, the federal government ought to have few mandates, i.e., foreign relations, border protection, building a national armed forces, and, most of all, cutting taxes paid by those who, by and large, are already doing quite well. For people like Samuelson, doing well is always the best revenge on those whose paths through life are rocky and dangerous. Tea Partiers, in particular, detest those they consider lazy welfare queens and kings, despite the fact that many Tea Partiers collect what the call “welfare,” within which they have been known to include Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. When this wrongheaded enmity is pressed against the elderly, especially those who rely upon those programs, on those who have lived long enough to achieve old age, it’s akin to saying to them, “Thanks for your hard work, and drop dead.”
Robert Samuelson’s Why are we in this debt fix? It’s the elderly, stupid proves he’s comfortable warring on the nation’s elderly. Period. Paragraph. Throw him off a train . . .
