MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics writer says Social Security checks are going up $63 a month for the typical retiree — the largest increase in more than a quarter century but likely to seem puny to the millions who have been watching in horror as Wall Street lays waste to their retirement nest eggs.
He goes on to say the Senior Citizens League said (doesn’t he believe them?) it did a study that indicated people 65 and over have lost 51 percent of their buying power since 2000, with the price of home heating oil and gasoline more than doubling since the beginning of the decade and such food staples as eggs and potatoes showing big increases as well.
Well, I guess seniors were the only consumers to face these increases for eggs and potatoes, heating oil and gasoline. How does that work? You’re under 65, you get a discount? Oh, I forgot. You get a discount all over the place if you are AARP age. Don’t forget 10% off Mondays at TJ Maxx, Tuesdays at Marshalls (or vice versa).
If Crutsinger has really taken the pulse of seniors, what a bunch of whiny, ungrateful, wrinkled old buzzards there are out there. We are talking 5.8% increase. How many younger workers do you know who got that kind of raise this year? (Excluding CEO’s of failed, bankrupt and bankrupting companies)
Yes, those felonious Wall Street crooks laid waste to retirement eggs, including ours, but who are we to expect hard working, young wage-earners to make up the difference? Their 401-K’s got battered, too.
So if you are a senior, stop your sissy, pathetic whining and enjoy your 5.8% raise by spending it where young workers who are contributing to the Social Security fund every working day will get a little benefit back. Maybe with the new money circulating around next year a few of their tedious, grinding jobs will be saved. It’s the least you can do.
Some of you know I am renovating my house. That calls for laborers and craftsmen –U.S. citizens because of my feelings on illegal immigration. I had a job set up with a local tile setter, but he had excessive earwax on the appointed day, then a pulled muscle the second day. Fernando could come right away. He did a beautiful job and by damn he brought me tamales the second day. You see how complicated this gets? I am from Texas and would sell my soul for a good, genuine Mexican tamale. Thank God I didn’t have to. Fernando is studying for his citizenship, so obviously a resident alien. So I’m off the hook—except for Ramona. Actually, it was my mother who rescued her from our garbage, trying to feed her children. After that day, she cleaned our home (and our friends’ homes) for over twenty years. When the time came, she insisted on sitting by my father’s casket all night. As I said, it is very complicated.
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