Republicans want you to work right up until you die. They'd actually like you to die on the job before you retire because then they can steal all the money you've contributed into your Pension, Social Security and Medicare.
"And I think that raising the retirement age... and eventually getting the retirement age to 70 is a step that needs to be taken." - Speaker John Boehner in 2010.
Yesterday, Republican Roy Blunt of Missouri was on Faux Sunday Morning complaining that Obamacare was going to "discourage people from working" while trying to push the Republican lie.
Hey, were you looking forward to slowing down and enjoying time with your wife? Or raising your children or grandchildren? Or moving from frigid Chicago to Fort Lauderdale because your knees, back and lungs can't take the cold? Or traveling to the land your grandparents left to come to America? Well, too bad if Republicans get their way they'll make sure you die at work.
This is one reason the Republicans hate Unions. Unions allowed Americans to retire and live a long time not working. And this is why the CBO report about Obamacare allowing Americans to be able to not die at work angered Republicans.
This is one reason the Republicans hate Unions. Unions allowed Americans to retire and live a long time not working. And this is why the CBO report about Obamacare allowing Americans to be able to not die at work angered Republicans.
No, you're not supposed to retire when you're 55. You sound to me like you are totally capable of still working. People are retiring now at 50 and 55 and so forth when they are still capable of working. According to the tables at 55, you've got 22 years left... - Rush Limpbaugh, (Crooks and Liars)Anything which allows Americans the ability to not work is hateful to Republicans because they represent Corporations and the very Rich. Republicans and their Owners see the American worker as nothing more than an expensive cog in the gears of Industry or War.
This is why no Conservative or Republican Alternative to Obamacare has every been offered. The Republican Healthcare alternative remains Don't Get Sick and if you do, Die Quickly.
Republicans don't want retired people around. They want you to work hard throughout your productive years after which they'll discard you when you get injured, sick or old.
Republicans want to Work you to Death.
Update:
Amanda Marcotte the Pandagon highlights how conservative Ross Douthat has tried to massage the Republican CBO lie by claiming that working yourself to death is for your own good, "people we should want to be attached to the workforce, for their own long-term good and the good of the economy as well.” He didn’t tell us who that was, but we suspect if someone told Douthat himself to shovel coal 50 hours a week for his own long-term good and the good of the economy, he would swiftly preclude himself.
They want you to work for poverty level wages so that they can retire on money that should have gone to you.
ReplyDeleteSure, Jerry that's the other half of the equation.
ReplyDeleteThe Koch Brothers, Papa Johns, Tim Armstrong of AOL and other CEOs don't see workers as valued employees but as an unnecessary expense. Thus they've been using the political power they've bought to drive wages to the bottom.
Absolutely, G_e_G. Employees are an expense, something to be minimized, marginalized, and neutralized. They would make them work for free if they could.
ReplyDelete"Eliminate the minimum wage law, then individuals would be free to accept jobs at whatever pay they were able to get." Peter Schiff
ReplyDeletePeople are now free "to accept jobs at whatever pay they were able to get."
ReplyDeleteWages have been flat for so long, you've all seen the numbers, the actual buying power of earnings has gone down. Very few families are able to get by on one income without some aid from family members or other sources. In fact when two incomes are required you have a greater chance of financial failure. Two times the chance for the family income to be cut short due to the employer, economy, health or ability of wage earner, any number of reasons. This often leads to taking a job less than perfect in order to have what ever income can be had. This of course is to the benefit of the job creator.
ReplyDeleteThey don't care about people, just property if that property is owned by the right people.
ReplyDeleteHence their attack on unemployment and their rejection of any Keynesian or other approach to stimulating the economy.
ReplyDeleteIncreased demand would push up wage rates to and possibly beyond the point at which an unemployed worker could return to work with an income equal to the one he lost when he got forced out of his job.
They want everybody to return to work for much, much less.
For them, an economy of dropping wage levels, rising productivity, and rising employment = rising profits, wealth, and income for the fewer than 1%.
We work more to produce more for them, and less for us, in other words.
Got it?
yellow fringe, Kulkuri, Philo V
ReplyDeleteOver 30 years ago Capitalists decided that American Workers were too costly so they began the Long March to demolish the Middle Class and the Rising Standard of Living Americans had enjoyed throughout the Nations history.
At times they employ various tactics, but throughout it all they've tasked their hired Toadies, the Republican Party and "Pro-Business" Democrats, to undermine labor and accelerate wealth inequality.
For years many Americans ignored this because brutal Capitalism was something that happened to Third World Nations.
Well, the Koch Brothers, BP, Boeing and UBS have no allegiance to the US, they treat Americans the same way they treat Nigerians, Central Africans, Indonesians, Iraqis, Filipinos, Australians, Mexicans et al, as a disposable asset to be used up, ground down and discarded when ever the worker gets to strong a voice or gets sick, old, or injured.
Lots of people are willing to work for minimum wages. Many more people will not work for the minimum wage. That is the line that separates the earners from the moochers. If you can make wages above the minimum wage why care about the minimum wage.
ReplyDeleteMinimum wage jobs are the jobs we get when we can't go any lower adn should just give up and go on welfare.
Bullshit. Put together a retirement plan and retire like you planned.
ReplyDeleteIf on the other hand you banked your retirement on a local municipality that bankrupted itself hiring overpaid administrators you done fucked up. Now you've got to deal with it so quit your bitching.
Nations with strong unions and strong social democratic traditions provide ordinary people a bigger slice of the pie throughout their lives, during which they work fewer hours and retire earlier and better off than Americans.
ReplyDeleteOh, and either the government sets the minimum wage with a view to protecting the most vulnerable or the employers set the minimum with a view to exploiting the most vulnerable as much as possible.
I prefer option 1.
"Nations with strong unions and strong social democratic traditions provide ordinary people a bigger slice of the pie throughout their lives"
ReplyDeleteExactly Philo! Nicely stated, this is why Tennessee Republicans and the odious Grover Norquist are tearing their hair out and threatening Workers and Volkswagen over the UAW unionizing the auto workers in Tenn.
When workers unionize their increase their standard of living and pass on a chance for their children to escape Corporate Bondage and that is something Conservatives hate.
Conservatives love Wage Slavery.
"Nations with strong unions and strong social democratic traditions provide ordinary people a bigger slice of the pie throughout their lives"
ReplyDeleteI am in agreement as well. As for the "bullshit" comment above, people can't save for retirement when they're barely making enough to get by. Unions ensure workers get their fair share. But the plutocrats want this money for themselves, and oppose unionization for that reason.
If the plutocrats paid workers more they'd spend that money into the economy... and the economy would grow (and everyone would benefit). But their sickness (love of money) prevents them from seeing this.
We should be talking about lowering the retirement age, not raising it.
Dervish, don't pay any mind to Andrew he comes by occasionally to fling feces and crap all over poor people. But, Republicans are lowering the retirement age by hoping to undercut American life expectancy and hoping more people work until they die.
ReplyDeleteAnd Philo V is spot on about Nations with "strong unions and social democratic traditions" it's why Germany is an economic powerhouse after being devastated economically in WWI and physically in WWII.