I.

Trudy Lieberman has written a superb analysis of the divide-and-conquer strategy of the would be safety-net cutters.

I like to call this the “The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” meme from the days when radiation was thought to make pumpkins grow as big as houses. At that time, if you wanted to make a movie to create an aura of terror, you would just declare someone or something, “radioactive”, and they became the really, really, skerry alien from another planet.  (Alan Simpson is going to hate this but, the movie’s theme was Revenge.)

Alan Simpson has given us much to work with, calling retiring Americans who claim their social insurance benefits, “Greedy Geezers”. But as Trudy Lieberman points out, there is an entire cadre of media persons who have been employed to sell the young-versus-old, divide-the-generations, strategy across the media ecosphere.

Editor: Have you a photo of a Sixty Foot Atomic Boomer we could place here??  No?  I did not think so as none have been found in the wild, nor in captivity.

 

II.

Disturbing vibes emitting from a sulfurous voice (Chavismo!) in the New York Times: Rattner accuses the currently retiring generation of stealing from their own children. Employing statistics from the galaxy of “the fallacious logic of infinite statistical horizons” Rattner bludgeons retiring elderly people with the bill for FICA taxes which have not yet been paid toward the future Social Security benefits of people who have not yet become adults.

There is a gap of 2.67 % of payroll projected out to 75 years by the Social Security Trustees.If common sense prevailed and legislators scrapped the FICA cap, which stands around 113K, then the deadbeats who earn more than that could ease their guilty consciences and make the Social Security program whole —way out yonder in the infinite statistical future.

You can see where I am going with this, right? The divide is not between generations. No. The divide is between the paid-too-little–&HaveWayTooMuchs and those who paid full-freight, FICA on every penny they earned.

III.

It’s that Inequality thing.