John Feehery, in his CNN opinion piece What’s Driving the U.S. Over a Cliff?, mixes four useful questions with unhelpful partisan rhetoric and misleading statistics that need to be challenged so that we can avoid driving over that cliff.
We do need to examine the retirement at 65 (which I presume means taking Social Security at 65). I personally favor age 70 or thereabouts, but the question is not so simple. When older folks retire it opens high paying jobs to younger people, and job openings ripple down the ladder. With unemployment hovering above 9%, early retirement provides opportunities for the unemployed.
We do need to re-examine our attitudes towards death and dying and towards our mix of preventative and terminal health care; having accompanied both my parents through their dying process in the last two years, I realize that dying is messy and gradual, not neat and tidy. One set of beliefs that contribute to the complexities of this issue comes from conservative Christians and from the, primarily Republican, lawmakers who cater to them… think of the embarrassing interference into the Terri Schiavo case by Congress a few years ago to further prolong her 7 years on life support at public expense; some of those for whom John Feehery worked for had a hand in that.
The question about the distribution of Federal income taxes is less honestly put; seems to be part of an orchestrated campaign by the richest 5% (of which John is no doubt a member of or funded by) to misuse statistics to protect their own rapid accumulation of an ever larger share of the American pie. He cites 32 percent of all Americans and 42 percent of single Americans paying no Federal income taxes, but avoids including Social Security taxes which are actually just another name for the same thing; goes into the same pool. But those percentages include adults who earn no income, women, college students, elderly, ill. What does he expect from these people? A pound of flesh. What this point and the next one illustrate is how to deceive with statistics. (I’m an engineer, so don’t mess with me on this.)
His question “why is it more profitable to work in the government than to work in the private sector?” is shear gibberish. When he compares government/private compensation he uses averages to deceive. It would have been more honest to compare pay and benefits for comparable jobs. His private sector figures includes a huge percentage of workers receiving minimum wages or less and no benefits; janitors, day laborers, etc. Governments start people at decent wages and benefits. Were the implications of his statistics true, he would have remained in government instead of moving to the private sector.
