It’s not all about me

I use my family as an example because I know the details about us, but this isn’t all about us, it’s about anyone and everyone who is in similar circumstances for whatever reasons.

Our specific situation is unusual, but there are other people who are in bad shape financially because of disability as well.  We’re a minority, there are millions of us, but we’re a small percentage of the population.  So if anyone has a threshold of suffering that needs to be crossed before they can’t sleep at night, rest easy.

Except the disabled aren’t the only ones who will need a social safety net.  My wife and I would have been OK if we had been able to keep working.  We can’t save for retirement now because of health issues.  But there are a lot of people who don’t get sick, work their whole lives and still aren’t able to save for retirement because they just don’t earn enough.  It isn’t just when things go wrong that people need help.  This may be the richest country in the world but that doesn’t make everyone rich.  If you’re doing fine financially, good for you, but there are people who need help. 

They don’t need help because they did something wrong or because they’re lazy, they need help because the poor and working class live paycheck to paycheck and wages for the middle class have been stagnant.  Sometimes there just isn’t enough left over to save enough to retire, or save anything at all.  Even with the programs we have now some people will keep working until they die.

We should be talking about improving what we have, not trying to cut it because it’s expensive.  What’s a human life worth, anyway?  What’s a little dignity worth?  Why is compassion not worth the expense?

I’d like to think we’re better than this.  Maybe it’s time we showed it.

Of course I worry about my wife and myself, but we’re not alone.  We help others when we can.  I don’t understand why we can’t do that as a nation.  We’re not just individuals, we’re a community.  When did we forget that? 

Maybe Sandy can remind everyone.

Crushing the future

Let me see if I understand this.

Obama is entirely responsible for the current state of the economy, including all of the debt, which will crush all the grandchildren of America.

Bush didn’t leave any debt for anyone, not even Obama, to deal with and no grandchildren will be crushed by Republican debt because, um, Republican debt magically evaporates?

Have I got that right?  Because that’s what some of the campaign commercials are telling me.

The $800 billion question

Why do people want to get rid of Social Security?  Why would anyone spend decades of their lives and tens of millions of dollars to get rid of Social Security?

If we eliminate ignorance or stupidity, sheer evil or a desperate need for someone to suffer so you can feel better about being rich, what could be the answer?

After all, Social Security is a very successful program that helps millions of people, is guaranteed for principal and interest, and has never added, and never will add, a cent to the debt.

The answer is simple - money.

How much money are we talking about here?  Well, more than $800 billion was put into the Social Security Trust Fund in 2012.

So the plan is to give your Social Security money to Wall Street.  That gives you increased administrative costs plus fees for managing your retirement money.  That money will be put into risky investments where you can lose everything and have no money left for retirement.  But don’t worry.

Wall Street bankers will get an extra $800 billion a year, so everything will be OK.

Optionally disastrous

I mentioned the proposed changes to Social Security and Medicare, and you might be thinking that these changes won’t hurt them because it’s just a way to offer people options of how to save for retirement.

First of all, even if the proposed changes worked, my wife and I are both under 55 and can’t work.  There’s no way we can save enough for retirement.  If you’re 54 years old could you save enough for retirement in 10, or even 15 or 20 years?  If you can, good for you, but most people in the country can’t.

Social Security and Medicare weren’t created because everything was working great for seniors.  Seniors were sick and living in poverty, that’s why those social service programs were created.

But the changes would destroy these programs.  They work as they were designed, with some minor adjustments, but these changes will push millions of people out of them.  Reducing the base of people paying into them will run Social Security and Medicare into the ground very quickly.

Social services aren’t there just for the fun of it, they exist because it’s simple human decency to make sure that people don’t die sick, in pain, and starving.

Any talk of a grand bargain is talk of abandoning seniors because they just aren’t worth it to the people who run the country.  It’s just profit over compassion.

Honest fears

I wonder if my wife and I can survive a Romney administration.

Being a Wall Street supporting right of center corporatist, I expect Obama to slowly destroy the programs that my wife and I depend on, but we might have a chance.  Romney will kill them quickly.

If the private insurance we have can be made to honor their contracts we can manage for a while, but when we hit so-called retirement age we’ll be sunk.

Disability and medical expenses have destroyed our savings and put us in major debt.  I’ve already cashed in and exhausted one 401(k) and a pension is about to go the same way.  Even with insurance our medical expenses are over $20k a year.  Without Social Security and Medicare we won’t be able to survive.

I am voting for the lesser of two evils, to be sure, but I am doing it in the hopes that we have some chance of survival.

If the typically lying CEO wins, I can only hope that both Houses of Congress have sane Democratic majorities.  I know, that’s a pretty thin hope however you look at it.

If I weren’t disabled I would still worry about the future of this country, but as things are now, I worry about next year.

Career dissembler

I do have to admit that Romney is campaigning like a corporate CEO.  Not that that’s a good thing, mind you, but he is doing it.

NaNoWriMo

In case you were wondering, I am doing NaNoWriMo this year.

I have no firm story idea.  Well, nothing well developed that I feel strongly about doing at the moment.  Writing is work, but NaNo should be fun so I prefer doing fun things, not dark stories I mean, for NaNo.  So of course all the things poking at my brain at the moment are on the darker side of things.

Oh well, I’ll think of something.