Social Security was spawned as a preventative measure to help the working man after the Great Depression. People who had worked hard their entire lives lost their life saving in the blink of an eye. The rational was that people would pay in and then one day instead of you pouring money in to Social Security, it would begin to pour money back to you. A system backed by the United States Government, the greatest country in all the land, would surely be infallible.
Jump to 2007 and times are bleak, and the system that would take care of us when we get old is in trouble. Surely a system backed by the United States, in which I pay my x% into every pay check would have money for me when I get old right? The simple fact is no it won’t.
The bread and butter of any campaign is to appeal to the middle class. This is going to be by and large the one section of the country that can take you from senator to president. Promises will be made, solutions given, and at the end of the day the middle class is taken care of: again not so much.
The article goes on and on about all the attention the so called “forgotten middle class” gets but when you get down to the end of the day, these people are forgotten. One minute the government is calling for the American people to put money into the economy and now in the middle of one of the largest housing crisis, that same government turns it back. The President when offered legislation that would expanded program a healthcare program to the middle class turns a veto’s it saying that would hurt private industry, and that it effects people who don’t need it.
The Presidential candidates are going on and on about wanting to help the middle class but are they providing any real solutions? Senator Clinton’s solution to the Social Security problem is to set up a 401(k) type account. Those who make up to $60k a year would get a $1000 dollar tax cut. The issue with this is that it sets up a volatile investment, and if there where another crash in the market, or if you retire in a down turn you return could be impacted monumentally.
John Edwards in Iowa was talking about ethanol and helping farmers who raise corn get back money in the form of subsidies. I know that his speech is geared to impact his performance in the Iowa caucus but the bottom line is that the percentage of corn farmers that grow corn for ethanol is about next none when you look at the middle class as a whole. Seriously how does this solve the major issues that face the average middle class worker. Not only is ethanol not a widely available product I don’t have the money to buy a flex fuel car because I’m too busy trying to save my house from foreclosure mean while worrying about how I will send my kids to college, while trying to save money for my retirement because the government was too busy giving subsidies to corn farmers, and fighting wars in far off countries to worry about the small issue’s like Social Security and healthcare that really do matter for the middle class.
(orginal article) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/16/AR2007101601537.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
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