The Post's Fact-Checker gives the coveted four Pinnochios to the AARP's commercial arguing that, instead of reducing entitlement spending, the Congress should focus on earmarks such as poetry at zoos and treadmills for shrimp. I'm no fan of shrimp treadmills (and presumably neither are the shrimp, lazy creatures that they are), but it's a joke to think we'll balance the budget this way. We do need to cut earmarks and other wasteful spending, since each dollar of waste that's allowed to continue is an additional dollar we need to cut from Social Security or Medicare. But any serious budget analyst knows that entitlements are where the money is and it's misleading to tell people otherwise. As the Post's Glenn Kessler sums up: The AARP ad perpetuates the worst stereotypes about how easy it would be to balance the budget. At a time when the nation's fiscal crisis — amid the looming retirement of the baby-boom generation — demands informed and reasoned debate, the AARP misinforms its members about the choices the nation faces. The choice is not between shrimp treadmills and Medicare; the question is how growth in the big entitlement programs can be restrained to accommodate the baby-boom generation without harming the elderly already receiving benefits. If AARP has identified real spending cuts worth $100 billion, it should have made an ad promoting those ideas, not an ad perpetuating myths. Four Pinnochios, the Fact-Checker's highest dishonor, which signifies "Whoppers." Good job.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Washington Post Fact-Checker Demolishes AARP Budget Ad
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"The choice is not between shrimp treadmills and Medicare; the question is how growth in the big entitlement programs can be restrained to accommodate the baby-boom generation without harming the elderly already receiving benefits. "
Why should those elderly already receiving benefits not help solve the problem? Why should they get a free pass for a program that they themselves failed to do anything about, except kick the can down the road. As my dad was fond of saying, you make your bed, you sleep in it.
I have nothing against people with money or have saved. I support people who save.
Look around at the number of seniors with networths over $1 million. How many of these seniors are there? Based on several different sources, I found there were;
"The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more -- excluding wealth derived from a primary residence -- grew 16 percent last year, according to a new report by the Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm. After a 27 percent decline in the number of millionaire households in 2008, the ranks of U.S. millionaires swelled to 7.8 million last year."
2 million households in the US alone had a net worth of at least $1 million excluding primary residences in 2005
in 2007 estimated that there were 16,600,000 dollar millionaires in the USA.
2,886,200 millionaires in 2009
The base question I have is why should a person making minimum wage be supporting millionaire who did not pay nearly as high a payroll tax while working? Social Security is broke, but giving a free pass to today's beneficiary based on AGE alone is just plain theft between generations. One in four or one in five households do not need any assistance from minimum wage earners. In fact we can lower the net worth threshold to about $200K and get rid of a lot of those who are far better off than workers and lighten the load, increasing economic growth while eliminating the entitlement problem created by today's beneficiaries. "Greatest Generation" could be changed to something else very easily by adding a few adjectives.
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