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You may have noticed an interesting frame the plutocrats and their spokespeople are using in the debate over reducing social security and medicare benefits – pitting the young against the old. The campaign is relentless, smearing the elderly as parasitic and stealing from the young.
For example take National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg’s recent USA Today Column:
Perhaps it’s time for both sides to consider an underappreciated fact of American life: The system we are trying to perpetuate was created for the explicit benefit of the so-called greatest generation, the most coddled and cared for cohort in American history.
One can only imagine what smears are coming from the Right as the children of the 1960s retire.
But is the demonization of seniors as “coddled” leaches fair? Is this really about old vs. young?
Dean Baker offers an alternative view.
The Wall Street crew has been in high gear trying to convince the public that our children’s well-being is going to be threatened by their parents’ and grandparents’ Social Security. This story would be laughable except that it is endlessly repeated by people in positions of power and responsibility…
Most workers have seen little benefit from growth because the gains have gone to those at the top.
This is why the yapping about the burden of Social Security and Medicare is so pernicious. If workers share in the gains of economic growth then there is no way that the cost of these programs will impose a serious burden on their living standards. In fact, workers’ living standards rose rapidly in the past in spite of large increases in the payroll taxes used to support these programs.
It will matter far more to our children and grandchildren whether they share in the gains of economic growth than if they have to pay higher tax rates for Social Security and Medicare. The rich, with the full complicity of the media, are doing their best to keep national policy focused on the cost of Social Security and Medicare. But the arithmetic says that the upward redistribution to the wealthy is the far more important issue for future living standards.
In other words, it’s the inequality stupid.
And that would explain the continued focus on young vs. old, black vs. white, and all the other merry conflicts the corporate media continues to insert into these debates. Anything but talk about the rich who, after all, own the news publications.
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The elites are using the Sequester cuts of programs which benefit children to flog the uncut benefits of those seniors benefitting from SS, MA, Medicaid.
In my link above, Greenblatt, acts as a Peterson agent-terrorist, to reflect a nonexistent tension between the needs of the young and the needs of the old. Rather than openly demand that the rich not be responsible for paying their fair share of federal taxes, Peterson and his hired guns cynically would rather divide the generations, hoping that the young will dump the old.
There is a lot of love within most families which will resist Scrooge like efforts to divide those who are held together by bonds of affection. The children of the sixties are now the parents of adult children who are just starting out in their careers or who are looking for work, or trying to pay for college. These parents are helping out as much as they possibly can despite the financial drag they experience from the Crash of 2008. But that is reality and the media and the Peterson mafia will have none of that. (Leave my children alone and leave me alone!)
The Children of the 60s are retiring to SS which has already been cut by 19% in 1983 by the same neoliberal cabal which seeks to cut SS again, now. Their Medicare would be paid for in full if healthcare costs were regulated by government. They have paid 2.6 trillion bucks in advance to fund their own retirement insurance program. It is called Social Security.
hmmm… interesting. Now Jonah, Doughy Pantload, Goldberg has taken to dissing the “Greatest Generation,” which had previously been so revered (mainly bc they were so in love with Ronnie the RayGunz). What’s changed? Why the “Greatest Generation” had the NERVE to live too long.
So in a few short years, we’ve gone from Bible Spice Grifter shrieking about “Death Panels for Granny – BAAAAAAD” to Doughy Pantload now saying: “Death Panels for Granny – GOOOOOD.”
Nifty Orwellian touch, there.
What a load.
Of course, getting a crack in on the hippie boomers is just icing on the cake, needless to say. Due to ever-increasing health insurance costs, my bet is that the bulk of the boomers won’t have the ability to live as long as many of the Greatest Generation did… they won’t have access to the same level of health care.
I guess Doughy Pantload can’t wait to dance on his moma’s grave…
Pitting people against each other is the oldest game in the world, and the sad thing is that it still works.
For example, in an Op-Ed yesterday liberal WaPo columnist and functionary Eugene Robinson expressed his anger against the sequester that goes into effect on April 1 for a number of reasons, including that because of its means of cutting the budget,
That is to say, the longer airport delays, etc. that we have heard so much about will be the fault of seniors and people who can’t afford medical care on their own.
Careful, that plays into their hand as well.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2011/11/07/us_wealth_gap_between_young_and_old_is_widest_ever/
.3% of voters voted for Jill Stein in 2012. Hey 98.7%ers..WTFU!
It is called protect oil’s monopoly at all costs. America saw this before in another form. It was called the “Missouri Compromise,” and the protection of slavery, an resource extraction process. The slave’s energy for the benefit of another. Not slave.
Much like the loss of 1.2 billions dollars out a tailpipe after buying 1.5 billion dollars worth of gas, in one day. For the benefit of oil monopolizers! Not for the benefit of Americans, but oil. More servitude for Americans WTF, to a corporate interest?
Scumbags……….
The billionaires are the genuine terrorists.
The Greatest Generation was “coddled”? I can only imagine what my father would have said to Jonah Goldberg if he were still alive. He left school at age 16 to find work in the middle of the Depression; served five years in the Army, most of it in North Africa and Europe; and worked two jobs for years after getting married and starting a family.
Why the hatin’ on the plutocrats? Of course they want to shift public resources from the public to themselves. That’s like being mad at a Yankee’s fan for rooting for the Yankees.
I completely agree that inequality is the fundamental challenge we face from the past couple decades of mismanagement. But the problem in dealing with it is not what comes from ‘the Right’. The problem is the Democrats.
Which is why voting third party is important.
Notice that the cuts are to the programs in the future and will affect only the people that Petey and his grandpa are “trying to save”?
Thanks for a great report. The same drivel was on CNBC discussion this morning, Fox discussion, as well as Mourning Joke with the ranting Republican and the Trilateral founder’s spawn.
It is ironic that the proposed structural changes to Social Security by Bowles and Simpson, are a 36% cut to future seniors of 2050. (Currently today’s young people.)
http://my.firedoglake.com/tomthumb/2012/11/04/attacks-on-social-security-are-attacks-on-todays-youth-the-seniors-of-2050-and-beyond/
The plutocrats want the young to dump the old, but the plutocrats are dumping on the young too.
C’mon we all know how this works out. The results of all this “can kicking”. It was foretold: The House absolves the defense cuts with a new bill. To “offset” that monetary put-back, Obama offers up his beloved safety net cuts to Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security to get back to “even”.
Congress Democrats howl and say no way. Then Reid and Pelosi sick their storm troopers like Heny Stoyer and Dick Durbin to get the Dems to go to slaughter. (Cardin in Maryland is already aping the new Demo line, “We have to compromise for the good of all” bullshit.) The Dems are good to slit their own throats over this to serve their corporate masters and their little bitch in the White House.
We get a Friday afternoon, late night vote count. Dems lose another 40 seats and the Senate in 2014.
Obama always gets his way on the backs of his “base”.
If this goes through with Dem votes, what is the relevance of the Democratic Party as any sort of alternative. I think we are all sick of 4+ years of “lesser of two evils.”
Eat your own motherfocking peas
Maybe I am an outlier but to me the “debate” has nothing to do with old people. When they talk about cuts and “reforms” I know that grandma will be fine. What concerns me is that every cut and tweak and fix is screwing ME over in the future.
Thats the problem with the debate on both sides. Dems need to make it clear to younger and by young I mean under 65 that all changes directly effect them. Its hard for someone 24 to really get riled up about it because it seems so abstract.
I wish dems would stop referring to SENIORS and instead refer to AMERICANS. They arent cutting benefits for seniors. They are cutting YOUR benefits
You make a great point. It’s Americans vs. uber waelthy multi nationalists who only care about their portfolio’s value. They own the media and the message so here we are repeating their talking points and propaganda.
Many Americans worship and adore the rich. They actually believe wealth is how GOD shows his favor. This belief is so deeply embedded in the population that it allows these same people to vote cosistently against their own self interest.
The great generals of the 21st Century are not employed by the U.S. Military. They are employed by the current batch of Robber Barons and we call them CEO’s. They use all the tools of the DOD but hide behind PR firms, think tanks, and quasi-governmental institutes. Blackmail, lies, extortion, phony criminal charges, public smears and a pliant information outlet is the updated version of dropping leaflets and broadcasting frightening potential calamities during the Vietnam War. And other very nasty things, to be sure. The why and how questions can be debated endlessly. The what question is painfully obvious. Corporations don’t want to destroy history so much as rewrite it’s outcomes. Snatching their past defeats and relaunching the offensive campaign to claim a victory. That it is their victory and not ours is beside the point to the new generals. ” For in a Republic, who is ” the country “? Is it the gov’t which is for the moment in the saddle? Why the gov’t is merely a servant- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its’ perogotive to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its’ duty is to obey orders, not originate them. ” M. Twain
Yeah, that’s the much more interesting discussion to happen amongst reality-based citizens. Is there some way to ‘throw the bums out’ of the Dem Party and make it an alternative to the GOP, or does the Dem party have to implode first and be replaced by a different party?
But that strategic framework still seems stuck at the fringe edges of consciousness of liberal thought even after the horrors of the past decade-plus.
Obama intends to keep offering cuts to Social Security and Medicare until the Republicans accept the cuts. I suspect the sequester agreement was designed solely to get Americans to accept these cuts. Once that’s accomplished, we will likely see even more tax cuts for the very wealthy, along with a new attitude that “deficits don’t matter.” Neither the Dems nor the Repugs are on the side of the people.
That story is why they started to be called the Greatest Generation, as I recall starting to hear the term. It wasn’t just war service but the whold story, from Depression to hard work and raising a family after the war, building the “middle class” and the country with their labor.
Their children and grandchildren have been as much the beneficiaries of the GI bill, SS, Medicare, and Medicaid, because those benefits meant they could live in decent neighborhoods with decent schools, and go to college because their parents didn’t also need to bear sole responsibility for medical care and retirement income for the Greatest.
That’s what social programs are, what we all do for each other, so we’re all better off. We have so much to lose if we don’t all understand this.
Most of us took these benefits for granted and such is human nature that most of us don’t realize their value until they are gone. This is happening now and I see the younger generation as more interested in fairness than the current establishment generation.
Wealth cannot continually trickle up without consequences for the wealthiest.
from what I have a read and through my own experiences most young people don’t share the view that parents and grandparnets are out to use them. Most know the system is crooked. Hell with young people having to live with their parents they would welcome the money brought in SS and Medciare!
here is a way to email Goldberg
http://townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/
Time to make lots of noise- before it’s too late.
This is odious to be sure but as messaging, the billionaires have a hard sell here. While it isn’t too difficult to get children mad at their parents, their grandparents are another matter.
People love their grandparents nearly unconditionally and all we need to is remind people that these rich bastards want to take away the retirement that grandma and grandpa worked so hard to set aside.
I don’t think we should by shy about it either. Calling the Pete Petersens of the world “granny-killers” is fine by me.
Another reason the GOP is trained to chant “entitlements” may be that Wall Street realized how close we got to “medicare for all” and the “public option” which would seriously effect their cash cow of using the sick to extort lots of money through the health care cartel. When your health care premiums go up it is because Wall Street wants more return on the stock. The sheeple are easily fooled by the big propaganda machine and money from Pete Peterson and other billionaires to pretend Granny is the reason for the unaffordable and unsustainable health care rip-off.
I just do not see how you can claim that the attack on Social Security and Medicare is based on the young attacking the old when the Republicans waging the battle, who are presumably the plutocrats, are defending the entitlements of the old by running bigger deficits not to be paid for by eliminating the entitlements of the young who will be required to pay the payroll tax while getting no benefits.
The Democrats need to make the Republican logic absolutely clear by demanding Republican cut entitlement now to pay for their tax cuts.
Sign my petition to force the Republicans to put up or shutup:
http://wh.gov/wLed
Give the Republicans a chance to vote to cut entitlements to cut the deficit without hiking taxes!
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Give Republicans the Specific Entitlement Cut Bill They Promised and Demand President Obama Offer
Republicans campaigned on cutting the size of government and cutting entitlements to pay off the debt, and having won control of the House and Senate by filibuster, demand President Obama provide leadership with a specific plan to implement the Republican campaign promise.
President Obama should give the Republicans what they demand:
A bill to be introduced in the Senate and brought to floor by Majority Leader Reid and five Democratic Senators, and the Senate presided over by Senate President Biden to lead the debate and vote:
Beginning April 2017, Social Security payments will be reduced by 5%, with no change to benefit calculations, with the 5% directed to debt reduction. The reduction would increase 5% every other April.
President Obama would demand an up or down vote.
http://wh.gov/wLed
mulp I live on $700 month social security. Maybe 5% is chump change to you, but if Obama cuts my check 5% I will not live long. I have no idea what you are talking about. Obama has no business tossing “entitlements” on the table unless he is talking about oil company “entitlements” or corporate farmer “entitlements” or Wall Street “entitlements”. Get a clue. The GOP lies. S/S is good until 2030 and never added a penny to the deficit. They are names I can not write on this comment.