Elderly woman rips Jeb in townhall: "I paid into that for years - now you want to take it away?

[DebJ]

140. Thanks for the clip now I'm really banging my head against the wall........

Here's a line they keep applying to Social Security:
"More money is being taken out than is being put in"

This is why the Social Security rates were jacked waayyy up over the course of my lifetime, so the money would be there when
Boomers retired. So that more COULD be taken out when we retired.

This is a poor example, but it's the best I can do: You put money in savings all your life. Then, you are 65, and have some small side earnings of say 10,000 a year. The bank tells you that you can only have 10,000 a year or else you are taking out more than you are earning and will be overdrawn.......um, that's what the savings was for.

And a point I've never seen explained with numerical projections: they seem to act like Boomers will live forever, and will be taking Social Security benefits still 50 years from now. 50 years from now, we will all be dead, and long before that, we will by dying off. I've never seen this taken into account and explained. Has anyone else? I'd like to see that.


And they speak of an 'option' to work longer, as if this is some viable choice anyone can just make. Just ask people over 50 who have TRIED to get employment the last few years. Ha! The employers choose, not the employees, and they do NOT choose people over 50 when younger people are available........something Right Wingers deny all the time, instead insisting that if you are out of work, you aren't looking or need to get retraining, etc, as if there is no age barrier at all. Bush et al speaks like employees just need to consider and choose to work more years, when this is NOT an option if employers won't change their perspectives and be willing to hire older workers.

And if you are in the lower income brackets, chances are that your body just can't take any more abuse and you are lucky to make it to 65. Over the course of my 40 years of working, I spent just 10 years managing restaurants. That meant standing on concrete floors for 12 hour shifts and having to return to work quite often with less than 8 hours to sleep, eat and bathe in-between and doing that for up to 9 days in a row without a day off, destroying my feet and my knees and therefore also impacting my hips. Most days I wasn't allowed adequate staffing during slow times so I couldn't leave the service area even to use the restroom, and leaving the area during peak times was an offense for which one's employment was terminated, and my bladder now suffers the consequences of that policy. On average, I didn't eat at all 2 days a week because I wasn't given more than 10-15 minutes 'break' to eat, and my stomach couldn't settle down enough to eat after so many hours of running at full-speed ahead; after the shift I'd just immediately crash so as to try to catch at least 6 hours of sleep before having to open the store the next morning after closing it the night before and getting home at midnight. I hobble around all the time now, and I'm just turning 60. And yet restaurant work is far less damaging than many other jobs, that's for sure. Now, if you have a better (and higher paying job) that allowed sufficient income to support a family (less cortisol/stress hormones constantly circulating and damaging your body for decades), that was likely less physically stressful as well, and you have a lesser need for social security due to higher earnings. Those are the people screaming: get rid of social security. Work more years.......fine, let them work and pay into it. I can't. My body has been wracked from those above me on the ladder who got their pay from my physical labors, and they retired well, with bodies that DIDN'T get put through the physical stress and strain, having had nice leisurely lunches for decades, given enough time to sleep and rest, and enough earnings to pay the bills instead of wondering how your child will get a new coat next winter..... And I only did that type of work for about 10 years. I just can't imagine the hell of people who did that and much worse for 40 years and more..........