A federal worker at a rally in Washington, D.C. in 2013. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Here’s our problem
The average Social Security retirement check is $1,825 dollars and half of people over the age of 65 have an income under $30,000 a year – it’s next to impossible for working people to retire with dignity.
It is absolutely shameful that seniors who have contributed to society their whole lives are left on their own to deal with poverty, hunger and hardship. And after decades of attacks on unions, far fewer workers are covered by other pension funds than in earlier eras.
And this doesn’t just affect older working people. If it isn’t possible to retire, then people have no choice but to stay in the workforce for longer. If people in their late 60s, 70s or even 80s are forced to keep going to work, then those jobs aren’t opening up for younger workers. The normal transition from one generation of workers to the next is disrupted by the cruelty of the retirement system.
The con game of billionaires
Trump says that the way to fix the problem is to let Wall Street bankers gamble with the money that we pay into the Social Security system with every paycheck. There is about $2.7 trillion in the Social Security trust funds – the reserves kept by Social Security so they can make payments to people when they retire. Right now, that money is invested in a way that is totally secure and guaranteed by the government.
But what Trump wants is to turn over this money to bankers who could invest it however they wanted. He’s already appointed one of those bankers, a billionaire named Frank Bisignano, to be in charge of Social Security. What does Bisignano know about the crisis facing retired workers? Bisignano made $28 million last year – he’s definitely never had to choose between buying groceries or paying for medicine.
Trump says, “There will be no cuts to Medicare or Social Security,” but he’s putting in positions of power billionaires and bankers who DO want to restructure Social Security so that they can gamble with your Social Security money on the stock market. Under such a scheme, they’d promise higher returns on your Social Security but inevitably they will make bad bets that WILL translate into cuts and put the system at risk. We all saw what happened in 2008: sometimes the bankers make criminally reckless bets, and then everyone loses their money. Just a few years before that crisis, George W. Bush was making a similar push to privatize Social Security – can you imagine how much worse the Great Recession would have been if he succeeded?
The real answer for the working class
Social Security taxes are set up to favor the ultra-rich. Everyone pays 6.2% of their paycheck into the system – but not if you make more than $176,000. This is called the cap or the “taxable maximum” – any income a person makes over that amount is not subject to the Social Security tax, even if you’re a billionaire.
If we eliminated the cap and made the rich pay, then there would be no chance of Social Security running out of money for over 50 years! That means that benefits could be massively expanded to ensure that no senior goes without the necessities of a decent life or is forced to work past 65.
A lot more would need to be done, too. For instance, we would have to take on the healthcare corporations that extort seniors with chronic illness, and make sure bosses can’t pay poverty wages to new hires. But the most important immediate way to guarantee retirement with dignity for older workers and job opportunities for younger workers is to end the outrageous system where millionaires and billionaires are exempt from Social Security tax.
This article is also available as a downloadable pamphlet here.
