Feminist Looking Glass

In 1983, the Social Security retirement age was raised from 65 to 67.  (67 is the full retirement age for people born after 1960.)  On December 1 of this year, the  National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is expected to issue a report that will propose raising the full retirement age from 67 to 70.  The Commission is dominated by conservatives and has the goal of issuing proposals on how to address the national deficit.  However, showing its true conservative colors, it will focus on the long-time conservative goal of cutting Social Security benefits—even though Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit.  (Of course, there are many ways to reduce the deficit, but–and I’ll state the obvious here–conservatives have continually thwarted those by, among other strategies, illogically opposing any kind of new taxes and by continually pushing for tax breaks for the richest Americans.  According to the conservatives’ long-standing counterfeit philosophy, the only way to cut the deficit is to cut services, even though the deficit reached record levels under the Reagan and Bush regimes.)

NOW is campaigning to have its supporters contact their members of Congress to show strong opposition to the expected report from the Commission.  NOW says that, if the Commission’s expected proposal to raise the retirement age to 70 is enacted, the reduction in lifetime retirement benefits would be $35,419, which, along with the 1983 reduction, “would slice one-third off the average retiree’s Social Security income.”  NOW also says:

Life expectancy for some women has dropped, not increased – Contrary to the benefit-cutters’ claims, Social Security is not going broke because people are living longer. Rather, a long-range solvency challenge in Social Security comes from the widening income gap between rich and poor. Today, 16 percent of all income is not subject to the payroll tax due to the taxable earnings cap (up to $106,800 annual income) versus only 10 percent in 1983, according to the Social Security Administration. In other words, most of the income for millionaires and billionaires is not subject to the payroll tax. Raising the cap on taxable income or adjusting the payroll tax rate would eradicate the long-term Social Security budget imbalance (National Academy of Social Insurance, 2010), providing a solution that avoids any cut in benefits. Raising the retirement age, said to be justified by a supposed increase in longevity, hurts all workers despite the unequal distribution of increased life expectancy. Men at the top of earnings have experienced a life expectancy increase of 5 years since 1982 while low-income men have seen a life expectancy increase of 1.1 years. For low-income women, life expectancy has in fact decreased.

Often, the monthly Social Security check is the only source of income for elderly women. Many do not have pension income and, after a lifetime of wage discrimination and years out of the paid workforce raising children and caring for sick relatives few women have been able to save and invest sufficiently for their retirement years. If anything, an improvement in Social Security benefits should be made, rather than cutting them.

Please go to this NOW page that will allow you to send an e-mail to your member of Congress.

Filed under: Health, Workplace Tagged: | Deficit, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, Social Security