Tierney's NYT OP-ED: American Elderly are Lazy SOB's. (Neocon BS)

[Tommymac]

This has me soooo angry my blood is boiling right now. Slothful working class retirees taking advantage of the system are not the reason we are having a financial issue with SS and young people have higher taxes ...it's because * and his f'ing corporate pig buddies have bellied up to the trough and drained it for their own personal gain and to finance a bloody illegal war in Iraq...GACK! ACK! GACK! :banghead:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/14/opinion/14tierney.html

New York Times Op-Ed
June 14, 2005
The Old and the Rested
By JOHN TIERNEY

"Americans now feel entitled to spend nearly a third of their adult lives in retirement. Their jobs are less physically demanding than their parents' were, but they're retiring younger and typically start collecting Social Security by age 62. Most could keep working - fewer than 10 percent of people 65 to 75 are in poor health - but, like Bartleby the Scrivener, they prefer not to.

<snip>

With the help of groups like AARP, the elderly have learned to fight for the right to retire earlier and get bigger benefits than the previous generation - all financed by making succeeding generations pay higher taxes than they ever did themselves.

The result is a system that burdens the young and creates perverse incentives for people to retire when they're still middle-aged. Once you've worked 35 years, more work often yields only a tiny increase in your benefits (sometimes none at all), but you still have to keep paying the onerous Social Security tax, which has more than doubled over the last half century.

If the elderly were willing to work longer, there would be lower taxes on everyone and fewer struggling young families. There would be more national wealth and tax revenue available to help the needy, including people no longer able to work as well as the many elderly below the poverty line because they get so little Social Security."

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Nobody knows how long they will live. My mom died at 61, and so

spent 0% of her life "in retirement."

[Tommymac]

7. My dad worked until he died...

He had congestive heart failure for the last 5 years of his life...and HAD to work until 6 months before he died at 73. He f'ing delivered newspapers to help pay all the bills ...he was on ss, had a small federal pension...good insurance but still couldn't make it because of the excess medical costs. We tried to help as much as we could...but it wasn't enough.

Some retirement....6 months on Hospice care laying in a bed at home....

Teirney is a pig.

[prole_for_peace]

18. oops...self delete

[Kolesar]

2. The elderly do keep voting themselves benefits & tax cuts

In Ohio, they got themselves lower property taxes than rest of us. Why?

[damntexdem]

11. Bec ause once one retires, one's income is relatively fixed.

So it's hard to keep up with inflation. It just makes sense to provide relief from property tax inflation to those who worked all of their lives and are now trying to maintain themselves in their homes.

[WePurrsevere]

20. Why...

Both the seniors and disabled's social security income is pretty well fixed. If they're lucky they get a tiny cost of living raise from the Congress but that COL is not based on all necessary expenses that keep going up and up. Every year what little they get is worth less and there's not a lot that they can do about it especially those who can't work due to health reasons.

Other then the cap at $90k what ticks me off is when Congress votes itself a nice big fat raise claiming rising expenses and throws a crumb for COL to those on Social Security. I'd like to see them try and live decently only on what folks get from Social Security.

[MindPilot]

3. following this logic...

Those lazy little bastard 5-year-olds could be working in the factory or the fields. Instead they waste tax dollars in school.

These Neocon fucks won't be happy until the middle class and working class become the slave class. And even then they'll be pissed because some of us won't be good slaves.

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[KoKo]

4. Tierney sounds like a Heritage Foundation Member. On C-Span

yesterday they showed Heritage Foundation Forum on the "Dependency Society." Claiming that Americans were now so dependent on the Federal Government for Welfare, Health Care and SS that it was sucking the strength out of growth for the future.

It was dreadful! DeMint the new SC Senator (who replaced Hollings) actually stated that Americans wouldn't get sick and need health care if they learned to follow a healthy lifestyle. Said all insurance should be paid for out of "private savings accounts." He said more crap like this and then turned the mike over to George Will whom he said wrote a column praising him (DeMint) which probably won him the election in SC.

Heritage Foundation has tentacles everywhere. Tierney has to be one of them to write a propaganda piece like this.

[swag]

5. Doesn't Tierney make you miss Safire?

And I had thought that an impossible task.

Tierney is such a fucking flyweight.

[BlueEyedSon]

8. LOL!

[Tommymac]

14. Like cockroaches, neocon's just keep multiplying...lol

[Wickerman]

6. Or, to raise more revenue John, we could elminate the 90k threshold

d'oh!

[Tommymac]

10. How about some fiscal responsibility on the Repugs side....

...quit the massive deficit spending giving tax breaks to the corporations and to finance *'s little Iraqi expedition?

...seems to me that in 2000 we were running a surplus...or was that Oceana ... dear me it is so hard to remember ....

[damntexdem]

9. Some of us will work forever, but ...

some are worn out by the time they can retire and draw SS. And we've all paid in. And, oh yeah, we DO tend to vote, in much higher proportions than do other age groups.

[PsN2Wind]

12. Says a man

toiling away, pounding a typewriter. "It's hard work"!!!!!!!!!

[Frances]

13. We used to hear that older folks should retire so that

there would be good jobs for the younger workers.

I guess that now there aren't many good jobs for anyone, then this columnist wants everyone to work 24 hours a day going from a part time job at McDonald's to a part time job at Walmart to a part time job at ....

[Tommymac]

15. Yeah, what ever happened to the American Dream...

Two cars in the garage, a little house, a few years at the end to fritter away your life savings taking the grandkids to DisneyWorld...

Now it's mass transit, a rented mobile home and greeting the grandkids as they come to Wal-Mart to buy Chinese junk....

[distantearlywarning]

16. This tactic is going to bite them in the ass, and soon.

Older people vote in a much higher percentage than younger ones, and they make up a fairly significant percentage of the Republican fanbase. I doubt they are going to take too kindly to the accusation that they are all a bunch of lazy slackers living off the government dole (especially the ones who did actually work hard for 40+ years and paid into SS). And they probably won't like the idea that they should be required to slave away until age 75 because their government can't handle money effectively.

[Tommymac]

17. Amen my brother. nt

[prole_for_peace]

19. my dad has worked at physical labor since he was about 14.

why should he have to work until he can't work anymore. he is exhausted and worn out at 63. i think he deserves to enjoy some relaxation in the last years of his life.

this guy has a lot of nerve for someone who pounds keys all day and probably makes more in a year than my dad makes in 3 or 4

[Tommymac]

21. That's why I am soooo mad...

I can't get the image of my dad's last years out of my head...he served his country without complaint, fought in two wars (WWII and 'Nam) and got wounded twice, worked until his heart couldn't take it anymore...and neocon bastard's like Teirney slime on those like him just to promote a privitized retirement system that will benefit only corporate investors and keep the working class American in bondage until their dying breath.

[Pystoff]

22. Keep on neocons please

Something these assholes don't understand apparently is being revealed in polls. The elderly and retired VOTE and they read ALOT so let these idiots keep chanting this tripe because no voting block votes at a higher rate than this group. They will suffer at the elderly retirees hands at the voting booths all over america for a long time for this.

And those retirees and elderly will vote...:dem:

[Tommymac]

23. Hmm, one might think...

The neocons want to end Medicare and SS and other such programs that assist the elderly and help increase the life span just because they tend to be educated voters?

Nah, that's too :tinfoilhat: for me....not.

[Pystoff]

26. Nah

The neocons are just plain ignorant lately and think since it isn't an election year they can shit on their constiutents is all. Problem for them is they shit on the wrong ones (elderly retirees). Those ppl have good memories at the polling places and won't forget who screwed them over in 06 and 08.

[AndreaCG]

24. Where does Tierney get that only 10% of those

62-75 are not healthy figure? Is it from pulledoutofhisass.com?

My mom retired at 62. She would have worked longer but developed an autoimmune disease just before retirement.

[Tommymac]

25. Maybe in his circle...

of privileged neocon scumswillers.

But it doesn't matter if 100% of the elderly are 'healthy'...they have lived a long and productive life, raised their kids, paid their dues...they (and we) deserve to spend a small part of their time on this earth enjoying a few simple pleasures.

It's neocon hogwash...portraying the elderly as feeders at the public trough...when the neocons themselves are the real slime swillers. He is just trying to justify privitizing the ss funds...so they can steal more of that money too.

It's neocon bs that young people's taxes are being raised becasue the elderly are off on a self centered pleasure binge...when the truth is taxes are being rasied becasue * and his cronies have robbed the treasury for their gain by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us and to pay for their illegal war.

[ismnotwasm]

27. What a bloody idiot

People are living longer, generally, and the longer you live, the liklier you are to be ill. I worked in a skilled nursing facility for eleven years. Hard to work with broken hips, prostate cancer, bowel obstructions. The age group was 50's to 100's. Many of them would have loved to work if they had the health to it. I used to enjoy the stories of the ones who worked so frigging hard all their lives, and actually had a retirement, got to travel a little, do things they wanted to do all thier lives. And then the health problems started. But goddam it, they got to enjoy life first, after raising kids, putting them through college--whatever--They worked their ASSES off. Fuck. Now I'm mad

[sellitman]

28. My letter to the NYT on this Op-Ed masterpiece:

To the Editors of The New York Times:

Your columnist Mr, Tierney enters the Social Security fracas with an opinion that reflects the Right Wing’s “solution” to social security: work ‘em longer and return ‘em less
.
I should give him credit for the exaggerations he so nimbly inserts: “… typically start collecting Social Security by age 62.” Has he really researched this “fact?” How many of these dastardly people were forced out of the jobs market because of their age?

Then he says, “Americans now feel entitled to spend nearly a third of their adult lives in retirement.” Now that is something else. He might also buttress his illogic by adding that Americans also feel they should all be much better off, if not indeed filthy rich.He speaks blithely of, …” raising the retirement age” because it would be “healthy for your country”, but selectively overlooks other federal income options, like restoring the inheritance tax on the rich, or taxing the high earners on their actual income, instead of cutting their SS taxes off so they do not begin to pay the same percentage as the working stiff. How about rescinding the income tax give-away that favors only the super-rich? That last item alone would keep SS alive would keep SS alive and well for generations.

Mr. Tierney mouths what the Far Right wants, not what the people need.

[Tommymac]

32. Loved it. Mine was not so polite, and a bit brief.

Mr. Tierney can spout this right wing nonsense because he has a nice litle warm hole to crawl into when he retires...G.W. Bush's rectum.

[Mythsaje]

29. Somebody remind me

where it is we keep the torches and pitchforks?

[teryang]

30. The reason the young are stuggling is because Americorp

...outsourced all production overseas. They are competing with Asians for employment.

I'm fifty three. I've worked hard all my life. I have no pension and no vested entitlements. Neither does my spouse. So I don't know what this guy is talking about.

I have disabilities now. The aging process is about the acquisition of disabilities over time.

You can judge a society by how it treats its elderly.

I've got an idea. Let's end subsidies to the defense industry. Their employees are fat and lazy. Let's just cut the defense procurement budgets by half.

[shrike]

31. Work where?

Every week I read these stories about professionals in their 50s and 60s, kicked out of their careers due to downsizing. No one will hire these people. So who will hire the 68-year-old? He/she can work a cash register at Walmart. That'll lift a lot of the burden off those struggling young families.