Dirckx likes the job, the hours, the people. She has benefited from the assistance of the federally funded Experience Works program, which has evolved from the old Green Thumb program. Experience Works provides 100,000 low-income senior citizens across the country with training and job opportunities (meaning the feds give businesses money to help cover the cost of hiring and training these older workers).
Now I'm all for people working for as long as they want. If septuagenarians or centenarians find they like working better than retirement, let them exert themselves to their heart's content. I love seeing old Jack at the county dump, bombing around in his big front-end loader in his eighties. My friend Donus up in Watertown retired from teaching and coaching eight years ago, but he still gets out to debate tournaments to judge and share his wisdom. For many old folks, work is a chance to get out and interact with people. They bring all sorts of experience and wisdom to the workplace.
But then I noticed one key line in the Dirckx story:
Dirckx needs to work part-time because her income from other sources, including survivor's benefits from Social Security, won't stretch far enough for her budget. She was a housewife and mother until her husband Ted died in 1995 at the age of 63.
She's not working because she loves to work. She didn't choose to stay active in this fashion. She has to work to pay the bills in her old age.
What's wrong here? Plenty. First, we're not talking about some irresponsible woman who didn't do her part. She worked as a housewife and mother. She gave up who knows how many career and educational opportunities and instead supported her husband and children with her sweat and smarts at home. But apparently our family-values society doesn't really value any work that doesn't produce a (man's) paycheck. Dirckx did her part as a housewife and mother, but society says, "Sorry, no retirement for you." And it's off to the diner she goes at age 74.
Sure, sure, we all have to be responsible and pay our way. But doesn't there come a point where a person is entitled to relax and enjoy the remaining years of life? Our senior citizens have raised families and kept homes. They've generated wealth and wisdom. What more can we demand of them? If old folks enjoy working, we shouldn't kick them out of the workforce. But we shouldn't force them to stay in past retirement age, either. Old age brings enough burdens; if we really value our older generation, we shouldn't let the economy impose more burdens on them.
I learned something new watching the Democratic debate last night. Well, actually two things. First, John Edwards was in favor of universal health care before Kucinich jumped on his bandwagon (or handbasket, as the case may be)... which is neither here nor there, but thought you would like to know.
ReplyDeleteAnd second, do you know why FDR originally set the social security retirement age at 65? Because that was the life expectancy at that time. The plan was only for people to draw retirement benefits for a few month before they kick the bucket. The reason the plan is having solvency questions now is purely statistical. The problem is a widening gap between the retirement age and the life expectancy age (along with the boomer population who is about to start cashing out).
Of course in good communist fashion, the collective response (most clearly articulated by Edwards) to this issue was to raise taxes to the rich, even though, it seems clear in my mind, that the rich don't draw out more in SS benefits than anyone else. The candidates don't say it this way, but they are expecting the rich to go along peacefully as they are being robbed to save SS for everyone else. (And Kucinich gets extremism points for wanting to tax the rich and lower the retirement age.)
The dissenting opinions were Clinton (who offered no solution) and Richardson (who thinks just by being elected, US will have an economic boom that will solve SS on its own).
Just saying...
According to figures I came across months ago, less than 10% of families retire with more than the equity in their home and social security as their income sources. That means that 90% of Americans are not properly saving, are not properly insured for Life Protection and don't have properly funded retirement accounts. Maybe we should be teaching children from a young age how to save money and the value of compounding earnings. Yes, teachers may have to do another part of child rearing that is currently not being done at home, unfortunately. I remember my grandfather saying, "If you put away 10% of everything you earn, you'll never need for money." Simple, but true.
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