Zombies
by digby
I think Hannity forgot to read the official GOP Social Security and Medicare memo:
HANNITY: Well what - what do you think's happened, because it seems that the country is torn in two places, because people like, "It's a right to have health care." No it's not a constitutional right to have health care. How did we survive all those years without Obamacare? Did people want retirement but now old people have to work longer? And young people can't even get into the marketplace to get a job.
STOSSEL: Well these retirement plans were built, Social Security, when most people didn't even live to age 65. And now look, we've been promised this, it's reasonable, the people who are on Medicare who get angry at me when I say this, they say "I put in for this my whole life. It was deducted from my paycheck." But they're not aware that they're getting back about 3 times as much on average as they put in. And it's not going to work.
HANNITY: You know, everybody that I've talked to in Washington, I said alright, my working life started at twelve when I was scrubbing pots and pans in the Norwood Inn in West Hempstead, Long Island and tending bar and waiting tables and hanging wallpaper, painting and laying tile and building houses and reconstruction, I did all that, all these years, and I paid into Social Security my entire life, John, and you know, now because I’ve been, I’ve tried, I've saved some money, I want my money back. I - because they promised that it was going to be there, and now I'm told we're going to means test it and we're also going to raise the retirement age so probably like three days before I die I'll get five cents back.
STOSSEL: Tough, deal with it. We have to means test it, we have to raise the retirement age.
HANNITY: So the government is going to legally - think about this though. The government is going to legally steal people's money.
STOSSEL: They legally steal people's money all the time. And -
HANNITY: Does that make it right?
STOSSEL: No, it is wrong, but the only practical measure is to raise the retirement age. I mean, means - give you your money back until you get back what you paid in, and then those of us that are wealthy, we can afford to pay people who, who won't have.
HANNITY: I believe in a safety net.
I'm sure he believes that the net will be much safer if only we can give people a "choice" as to whether they want to live or die, but still, not bad. Now Stossel, on the other hand, is just a typical crude libertarian fatuous jackass who has no idea what he's talking about. I'd love to see the mechanism by which Randroids like him, who consider selfishness the highest human virtue, would give everyone back the exact amount they paid in and then have the wealthy subsidize those who run out of money.
But I do have to give credit to the financial industry for the huge success of their "life expectancy" lie about the Social Security administration's allegedly creating a diabolical plan for people to pay into but die before they ever received a penny. I know it's the type of thing Republicans would do, but it didn't happen. I know a lot of people feel it was the dark ages, but back in the 1930s they were advanced enough to build Hoover Dam and airplanes so they also understood that the 63 year life expectancy of the time was based upon high childhood mortality. It was always known that the vast majority of those who paid in would live to collect.
This is a terrible zombie lie and I don't know what it's going to take to kill it. At this point I'm afraid it's going to kill Social Security.
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