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On both sides of the debate over the social safety net, we often see the term ‘strengthening Social Security’ tossed around.
This phrase means different things to different people. To the majority of Americans who support expanding benefits, this phrase likely means taking a strong position against any cuts or changes that negatively impact their benefits.
But to understand what it means to Wall Street, the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable is a very different story. To them, it means to advocate for a reduction in benefits, for raising the retirement age, and for hacking away at perhaps the most important social program in our country’s history.
As the nation’s largest seniors’ advocacy group, AARP purportedly strives to work in the best interests of its members. But has AARP actually stopped to ask their members what position they should take on the social safety net? To help answer this question, look at the brief survey provided to members as a precursor to their “You’ve Earned a Say and We’re Listening” tour; a national town hall series to “make sure your voice is heard in any conversation about the future of Medicare and Social Security.”
The survey begins:
1. Which of these statements do you think describes Social Security the best?
A: Social Security is okay as it is
B: It needs minor changes
C: It needs major changes
D: It is in a state of crisis
Question 4:
4. When it comes to securing the future of Medicare and Social Security, which of the following do you expect:
A: More funding will be needed to maintain the same benefits
B: Benefits will be reduced
C: Either A or B
D: None of the above
If the majority of Americans oppose cuts, and instead support the expansion of benefits, where is that option in AARP’s survey? Or are the majority of members really expected to ‘make their voices heard’ in the catch-all comment box at the very end? One would think this popular position might be important enough to be added as an option on their survey, yet it has been completely left out.
While AARP members are left with limited options to communicate their wishes to their organization which rakes in billions off insurance payments and millions more siphoning its members off to choice businesses, the CEO holds court with some of the most outspoken and influential enemies of the social safety net – groups and individuals who have gone on record supporting raising the retirement age or switching to Chained CPI – in a forum in which they can voice their opinions without restraint.
Can AARP really provide an adequate service to its members without actually giving them a chance to say what it is they want for the future of the social safety net? We think that’s a very important question to ask, and if AARP won’t ask its members, we will.
39 Comments
Thanks, Brian. This is great.
Looks like it’s time to burn those AARP cards again.
“purportedly strives”; absolutely accurate. As someone who used to be in AARP, I can offer my own experience that I’m able to acquire all the insurance and benefits like roadside assistance on my own at lesser cost than what I could through AARP.
It’s now nothing but another corporate captured entity.
Would like to donate but simply don’t have the income available.
I always send their envelopes back to them unopened.
Why is there no option to “Lower the retirement age”?
Why is there no option to “Raise the income cap”?
Why is there no option to “Double benefits”?
If AARP won’t consider progressive solutions that immediately benefit their membership, and allow their members to provide feedback on those solutions, they are worthless as advocates of their members’ opinions. They are self-limiting the debate and playing on our opponents’ side of the field, by definition we lose there.
4. When it comes to securing the future of Medicare and Social Security, which of the following do you expect:
A: More funding will be needed to maintain the same benefits
B: Benefits will be reduced
C: Either A or B
D: None of the above
What kind of a question is that? Not which pill would you prefer to take, but what do you expect?
Based on the trustees report, C is the only correct answer, but that might not be what people would prefer.
How to protect social security? End America’s servitude to the oil whores. Where .80 cents of every dollar spent on just gasoline is wasted?
Any older American who relies of SS and other decimated retirement funds understand how base line energy cost increases inflate the price of everything. No rocket science here folks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You don’t have to take any of those pills. Teddy’s post contains alternatives, for example.
I have been distressed by AARP’s position to the point of dropping my membership. In fact, the renewal notice arrived the same day as FDL’s first mass AARP card burning, an occurrence which just had to be some type of karmic statement!
Their soft stance on the SS/Medicare issue has cemented my long held suspicion that AARP is interested in selling insurance, vice advocating for Seniors. They obviously see a benefit reduction as a terrific opportunity for their core business, not as the catastrophic blow it would be to many among their membership who rely solely upon these Benefits. I make a point of telling everyone I can about AARP and their and their so called “Advocacy”.
AARP was not formed to advocate for seniors –it was formed to shill insurance and yes, I am an AARP member. Let us not forget AARP fought hard for Medicare part D which continues to be a huge giveaway to the drug companies.
That’s why I never joined.
AARP focus group for the GOP campaign?
What do you “expect”
No wonder the AARP never employs an actuary to analyze the situation and advise them – they don’t want to know the facts.
Double benefits? Raise the cap?
That is rich.
Where is the option:
“Be responsible for your own retirement and stop relying on the hard work of others”?
Is this you?
One way to fund social security:
Change the pay roll tax by reducing it from 6 to 5 per cent on the first $100,000 which would be matched by the employer then a graduated upward tax on all earnings (gross income) above that amount. Such a tax could look something like this:
The first $100,000 5%
$100K – 1M +1%
$1M – 5M +2%
$5M – & above +3%
Everything paid above the first $5,000 would be a tax deduction. In other words a person making one million dollars would pay $5,000 on the first $100,000 and $9,000 on the remaining $900,000 for a total of $14,000. Someone fortunate enough to be making $10,000,000 would pay $5,000 plus $9,000 plus $80,000 or 2% on the next $4M and $150,000 or 3% on the final $5M for a total of $244,000 or 2.44% of earnings of which $239,000 would be tax deductable.
What don’t you understand about SS and Medicare? Oh – apparantly everything!
Tell me, who’s more likely to have his head in the sand:
A) Someone who saves up and is responsible for his own retirement.
or
B) Someone who doesn’t save up and relies on social security.
You the guy reaching into your neighbor’s pockets? Take care of yourself, don’t expect other people to take care of you.
Excellent comment Teddy! Succinct and to the point. I never joined AARP because they would sell out their membership in a heartbeat – they are Simpson-Bowles masquerading as regular folks.
My husband and I used to be members until I found out that they were bought and paid for by the drug industry and the right wing.
All correspondence goes back to them in their postage paid envelope and hopefully they will get the message no more mail.
Where did the money come from with their new building in DC? All from the pockets of us little people who think aarp is really one of us and fighting on our behalf.
Why don’t you ask me? I’m on SS. I am not on Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Linkedin. Why don’t you put your survey where those of us who aren’t spread over social media can answer? Like, here. How about, let me think…….email? The way you usually get in touch with me, and presumably other senior social media antiquarians.
Private pension funds, 401ks, and all those “Individualistic” private enterprise options have sometimes been looted and plundered by Privateers seeking fast money at the expense of those who contributed to those funds in good faith.
Those same Privateers benefit from a socio economic system established and defended by the blood and sacrifice of generations of ordinary citizens who fought wars for this version of “Freedom”. Real people have been been killed, crippled and driven into mental illness in service to this system.
And some think it comes for granted, that they don’t benefit from what others have done.
Is a 6% tax on your first 106K of income too much to bear?
We all reap things we have not sown, and I have no problem giving something to the children of our future.
Social Security? Are you referring to the program that ALL OF US have been paying into ALL OF OUR WORKING LIVES? Why, yes. I do expect that the social insurance system that I have contributed to ALL MY WORKING LIFE will provide one of the three legs of the retirement stool will be available to provide me with a retirement payment to keep me from eating cat food, committing suicide, or being a “burden” on others.
And if you believe I have to reach into someone else’s pocket to claim what I have RIGHT TO is a problem – well FUCK you.
Calm down.
I didn’t say social security is good or bad. I think its good, but at the same time you can’t stick your head in the sand and not see that change is coming and not all of it may be positive. Social security should be a part of most everyone’s retirement plans but it can’t be the sole piece. If you stick your head in the sand and pray for double benefits or something like, your setting yourself up for poverty.
And regarding what you have a right to, you have a right to what you paid for, but you don’t have a right to MORE than what you paid for. Don’t ask others to pay more when you yourself were not subject to it when you were working and don’t ask for double benefits when you paid only enough for half the benefits.
aarp & obama and most democrats have turned off the 3rd rail – ‘lil prostitutes are all scared of them big doners and don’t want to anger them .. so it must be that poor children get less medicine and your grandma can’t eat .. it is all so practical and bi-partisan, this immorality. at this point it appears that one can only #resist
i dont think that any one here noted that socsec lifted 85% of America’s seniors out of poverty, and that one of America’s largest creditors is .. not china, not japan (although we owe them a lot) but rather the socsec trust fund, and that people who make any $ over $107,000 are ‘exempted’ from payments -did ya here that ‘personal responsibility’ buffs .. the law unfairly and un-libertarianly exempts income over $107,000 – that doesn’t seem fair to me – I say: no exempted income, and that includes capital gains – now that would solve the fake ‘problem’ in a flick of ayn.rynd’s fake eyelashes
TheCCCorps wrote this song on this topic. Its time ‘lend a hand’ as we have ‘always known’ – http://acmeartscollective.com/acmerecords/2011/09/16/civlian-conservation-corps-demo-of-lend-a-hand/
Why are we referring to the “members of AARP” as if they are the ones at risk because of the shady enterprises (eg, insurance) of its administration? You only have to check out their pile of coupons and luxury hotel accomodation discounts and golf club memberships etc. to know who they are looking out for and, geez, it IS the membership. And guess what, the members are NOT regular old people. They are fucking rich retirees. The people AT RISK are the people who can not even afford a car that needs insurance, or any kind of discount luxury accomodations etc. The reason I don’t join is because they just ain’t my kind of people and I think they are going to be “assisted” just fucking fine, as the AARP as already demonstrated.
Hopefully someone like you relied on the likes of MF Global or Bernie Madoff (you know, those genius expert investors) to grow your retirement savings. If you paid into SS during your working life, do you now plan to opt out of the plan? Hope so . . . that’ll leave more for those who have been trapped for decades in the free-market Reganesque vision of America.
Course I’m not going to opt out. Its the same faulty argument that conservatives are being hypocritical of using government services they pay for. And read my later post. I’m not against social security, I’m against people who expect more than what they put in.
Kind of like life insurance? or health insurance? If you purchase a million dollar policy to protect your family, make the first payment, and get killed in a tornado . . . your family should only ceollect a pittance since you “didn’t contribute very much money”???
And all those worthless, stay-at-home wives and mothers? What the heck did they contribute? Toss them out on the street with a tin cup if hubby doesn’t live long enough to ‘take care of them’ in the event of an untimely death.
I have asked the post office to stop delivering AARP trash to my house.
My grandmother never contributed to Social Security . . . and collected benefits for 10 years. She didn’t have to survive on catfood, nor surrender her adult integrity/independence because her ‘egg money’ wasn’t enough to provide sustenance. OTOH, my brother contributed from age 16 through 58 . . . and died unexpectedly, never collecting a dime. Somehow things seem to ‘even out’ except for people like you who apparently think that all you are and all you have comes solely from your own efforts. And everyone should be like you.
someguy66–
In all due respect, you are profoundly ignorant of how the social security program works. It is not set up like a 401K defined contribution plan.
Its structure is weighted, so that lower income folks (who are obviously in the most need of supplemental income) receive a somewhat higher return on their contribution. (That’s why it is considered to be a “progressive” program.)
Blue
Its not set as a 401k, but that doesn’t mean financials don’t matter. The promises made by social security must still be balanced against the inputs, except your inputs come first and the promises come later. If you paid into social security, you deserve to get what you paid for. If you think of it as a pension, pensions still require contributions. What you don’t deserve is to demand more after you finished paying in and then demand that others who are currently paying in to pay more.
Not everything I am or everything I have comes completely from my own efforts, however, there are things not a part of me or are not owned by me that also comes from my efforts. For example, my tax dollars goes to many things that I don’t own.
Ultimately remember the quote “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. Well now we have people asking for more benefits for themselves while asking the rest of the country to pay more taxes.
someguy66–
The Social Security Trust Fund currently has an approximately a 2.5 to 2.6 trillion dollar surplus. The reason that it does, is that the so-called “payroll tax” was almost doubled in the early 1980′s in order to fund the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. “Google” the Greenspan Commission on Social Security Reform, or better yet, the Social Security Reform Act of 1983 for the particulars.
The system is a pay-as-you-go system. Are you telling me that after paying their parents’ social security benefits as promised to them, the Baby Boom generation is somehow “not entitled” to collect their promised benefits?
Good luck trying to sell that to the 78 million Boomers who began retiring a couple of years ago.
Instead of fixating on denying Boomers their well deserved benefits, might I suggest that you consider lobbying your lawmakers to man up, and reimburse “The Fund” any monies that they pilfered in the name of nation building and empire.
Blue
someguy66–
I’m sorry, but I cannot believe that you “possibly” think that JFK’s famous quote had anything to do with social security benefits.
I’m all for people having different opinions, but I just have to ask, “Is this some kind of joke?”
If not, you really should (seriously) read up on the subject. The information is not that difficult to find.
Blue
“Strengthening Social Security” is Luntz-speak for gutting it. Pete Peterson paid many dollars for that clever bit of wordsmithing.
The plundering of pensions is ongoing, as noted by Matt Taibbi on with Cenk Uygur tonight.