More than 45 million people, or 14.5 percent of the U.S. population, lived below the poverty line last year, the Census Bureau reported in September. And economists forewarn that elderly Americans are on the brink of experiencing the greatest retirement crisis in “the history of the world.”
This demographic is too frail to work, too poor to retire and those with pensions likely won’t receive the amount of money they’ve been counting on.
Relying on The Washington Post’s “miserable pension” — he worked at the paper for about 25 years — was a major factor that led to McPherson’s financial demise.
His pension kicked in when he was 65 and is now worth half of what it was, he wrote in his essay.
The octogenarian founded The Washington Post’s “Book World” and won a Pulitzer in 1977 for his literary criticism for that section. He went on to write two “well-received” novels in the ’80s and pursued his passion of covering eastern Europe after the fall of the Wall.
After working for the Post intermittently for 25 years, McPherson accepted the company’s deal of taking an early retirement at 53. He accepted the offer because the Post agreed to keep him on its medical plan, which was “very good and very cheap” at the time, and because he thought he could make a decent living continuing to work as a writer.
McPherson earns $11,670 a year and his Social Security comes to “more than that,” he wrote. He’s never applied for welfare, Medicaid or food stamps. The annual income threshold for being counted as living in poverty was $11,490 last year for a person.
The comments are, as usual, a total Dumpster fire:
More like a perfect example of relying on the government for your retirement. If El Gov hadn’t been taking half the guys income all these years he’d have had a lot more to invest in his own retirement. Social security? What a joke. They’ve plundered the interest from that system for years to pay the national debt. Can you imagine the retirement your average Joe would have if they invested what they put into social security into their own IRA? Not to mention the government handing out benefits to immigrants whether illegal or not. Those who are “disabled” (not willing to work). More government is not the answer. They have the mierda touch.
This is where we’re at, what we’re doing: We give you a deal, and you take it, because … why the fuck wouldn’t you? You worked hard for these institutions all your damn life. You worked hard for them because they promised to take care of you and up until recently, they mostly did.
(And I know it’s like arguing with a stuffed animal, but who the fuck is asking for MORE GOVERNMENT here? Let’s start asking for MORE CORPORATION, as in do for your employees what you promised them you would do, you selfish fucks.)
I don’t understand what we get as a society out of creating thousands and thousands of desperately elderly people. My grandfather’s pension took care of my grandfather until he died and afterward, that pension kept my grandmother in their home. Which she and her children could afford to keep up, thus saving the neighborhood from blight, while she shopped at the local grocery store and bakery, got her local paper delivered, and paid local taxes which fixed the roads and schools and kept the streetlights on.
What would society have gained if those two people had been kicked out of their home? What does society get out of telling people like them too bad, so sad, know how we promised you a pension well fuck you, Shadow President Paul Ryan says we can’t afford that anymore and every Democrat within shouting distance is afraid Chuck Todd will call them mean, plus the company has to think of the shareholders and you’re just a guy who ruined your knees and eyes and hearing making money for those shareholders so it’s not like we owe you jack shit?
You know what we get? Starved schools and unfilled potholes and the smallness and meanness that comes from fear, ordinary animal fear that we have for us and ours won’t be enough, that we need to build walls around ourselves and man the parapets with guns, fence out the Other and glare at those within.
A.