A Rant In The Heat
It’s hot again and the cats are on edge. Adrian has dissolved into a remnant low, and the local thunderstorms aren’t storming, they are just hanging around and acting tough.
In the mean time, the Republicans, aided and abetted by Zero and what passes for the Democratic Congressional leadership, are free to wander about spreading lies and misinformation about the Social Security & Medicare systems.
First off, sorry but there has been only a minimal increase in the number of years an American can expect to hang around, and some of that increase is now fading because of the tough economic times. The AVERAGE life span of Americans has increased, but, by now, I hope everyone has learned that when you read or hear the term AVERAGE, someone is trying to con you. More children are growing up rather than dying of the many diseases that were quite common when I was a child. Childhood immunization means that getting born in the US is not the coin toss that it was in the early 20th century. This means there are more people to work and pay taxes. This is one of the things that Digby refers to as Zombie Lies.
Another point in that post is that people will get about 3 times as much money out of the system as they put in. Well, duh, if you have been paying for almost 50 years there should be some interest. With only annual compounding you triple your money in under 24 years with 5% interest. Wall Street and their minions want to give you the original principal and loot the much larger interest that has accrued.
On to Medicare lies – You get Part A, the hospitalization at no additional cost to you beyond the money you have already paid in FICA taxes, but there is a charge for Part B, the medical insurance. Normally they deduct it from your Social Security check, but if you aren’t drawing Social Security you will have to make payments if you elect to use Part B [and you would be insane not to unless you are covered by another form of insurance]. Most people also buy separate ‘Medigap’ insurance to cover the 20% of the bill that Medicare does not cover. It isn’t free healthcare, and it damn sure isn’t ‘socialized medicine’, but it is far and away the most efficient health insurance available in the US from the patient’s point of view.
The people trying to destroy Medicare and Social Security are not working for you or your best interests, they are working for their owners in the financial and insurance industry. They don’t want to strengthen the system, they want to loot it.
2 comments
Yes… A good and accurate rant Bryan. It also annoys me that it’s so simple that even a moron should understand it, yet you must have many superior (inferior?) morons in the USA because far too many don’t get it. And it’s happening all over the World too, even here. The World’s population may or may not be *living longer*, but they are certainly getting dumber by the day! I know a large part of it is due to the plan the elites have to keep the lower classes so busy they don’t have time to think about anything, and the irrational fear that has been installed that *change is bad*! If you change things, you might make the worse! Better to keep them as they are. Except… the ones chanting *no change* are the ones who want to change things, and for the worse! It seems people believe that if someone say’s something often enough, it must be true. Even if you knew it was a lie to start with.
Bottom line… Humans (for the most part) are stupid. *shrug*
They want to loot the Social Security Trust Fund. It’s over two trillion dollars, and the elites resent that ‘poor’ people can have that much money available to them without paying fees to their Randian overlords.
Most people have no idea how much money is involved, or that it earns interest.
You’re right, people are so busy trying to keep their heads above water, that they don’t have time to think things through and figure out they are being screwed. They way the schools are being degraded, it won’t be long before they will lack the skills to do the math for themselves, or to understand the laws that are passed.