Worrying about the wrong thing

Back in December, I dutifully filed for Social Security online, just as Lt Sulu told me to do. Piece of cake, right?

Not.

See, the problem here is that whilst you, as the filer, may be able to take advantage of 21st century technology to file, it's still the 1930s at the other end of the pipeline, and it is there that the pipeline chokes.

The first sign of trouble came last week, when a crack Social Security rep called me with "a couple of questions." The first one I expected. It isn't enough to say "no, I'm not filing for Medicare Part B because we're enrolled in my wife's public sector retirement programme." It is necessary to repeat that several times, going slower each time and using smaller words with each iteration.

We got through that, and the rep says, "what was your state of birth?" I was tempted to say "a baby," but a lucky instinct warned me I was dealing with someone unfamiliar with humour. I answered, truthfully, New Hampshire. The rep digested this for a moment, and I asked "why?" It seems that some GS-1 on their end had somehow made my place of birth Concord, MA, instead of Concord, NH. Either the party at the keyboard had never heard of Concord, NH, or by a feat of digital gymnastics typed MA for NH. Look at the keyboard and you'll how interesting a feat this is. Look at the average scroll-down list for state abbreviation and you'll find that even more challenging.

This error is my fault, somehow. According to today's follow-up message,  it is now my problem to prove that I was indeed born where I was, and not where the stupidity of a Social Security grunt says I was. To do this a certified copy of my birth record will not do: it must be an original. (Social Security says nothing about returning this original document, by the way.)  This, mind you, is from what is supposed to be an all-powerful, all-knowing Government. They can't pick up the phone and confirm my place of birth with a small city bureaucracy. Come on, I'm not John Smith: I have one of the rarest names in the country. How hard should this be?

Piece of cake, says my librarian spouse:  just go online and file with Concord Vital Records. Uh huh. Concord NH may be more advanced than Social Security, but they have not quite made it to 2013. All one can do is download a .pdf application, fill it out and snail mail it to Concord with a copy of a "government issued photo ID." Oh good, a copy: I won't have to go without a driver's licence indefinitely. Presumably, in a few weeks they will get around to snail mailing the embossed original, on parchment, maybe?

Time, meanwhile, is marching on. The rep said that I should  receive my first deposit on April 24. I am now embarking on a bureaucratic journey that I expect will take as much as two months. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, the process stops. Any delay will presumably be my fault as well.

Sorry, George Takei. At the other end of the Web application process is a bureaucracy for which typewriters seem to be a novelty. When I receive the parchment from Concord, I'm supposed to stuff it into an off-size, oddly-coloured envelope addressed in a scrawl that seems to have originated in the Yerkes Primate Centre.

Those who are beating the drums about the possibility of reduction of Social Security benefits have misdirected their anxieties. The real concern is whether the creaking, primitive bureaucracy that is the Social Security Administration is capable of dealing with 10,000 people a week retiring for the next 17 years. Based on this instance, I suggest the bureaucracy will collapse long before the money runs out. We, poor schmucks, will die off in the wake.

Gloom

Over the last weekend we spread out some of our limited resources in various campaign contributions, including the presidential campaign. Today, after the first debate, I'm worried that the presidential donation was a waste.

No need to re-hash some of the other reviews, most bad and a few delusional. I thought Obama looked like someone in an interview who really doesn't want the job.

I do have  to add my vote to those who thought Romney was now shaking the Etch-A-Sketch and trying to move back to the centre. The trouble is, he may now be unable to do that. He has deeply indebted himself to the reactionaries. Worse, he has taken on Ryan, and I believe Ryan's chief function is to be Romney's keeper, forcing him to remain on the path to ideological purity.

This is grim news when you're 65, underemployed and never likely to be anything else. This is chiefly thanks to a Supreme Court that has enabled hiring bigotry. Full retirement already looks like a delusion. I don't hear Romney or Ryan when they try to buy people my age with promises that they will "save" both Social Security and Medicare. They represent the reactionaries of their party, who have hated Social Security for 75 years, and hated Medicare for 47 years. Elimination of both is their agenda, make no mistake. Consequences? Damn consequences. They also represent the capitalists who have destroyed private pensions in the US without a single thought for the consequences.

If Obama doesn't give a crap about keeping his job, how about it? Let's go have that die-in on the Capital steps.

A comment from the age barrier

Some of the online idiots whose uninformed opinion passes for truth would have one believe that I, at 65, am eligible for Social Security.

Not.

People my age, first wave of the so-called Boomers, had our full retirement age advanced to 66 a generation ago. The second round of my generation had their full retirement age hiked to 67 at the same time. Thus, in a stable political climate, and an employment climate that didn't consider people old and worthless at 45, I would have no problem with further incremental advances in the retirement age. I've never had a problem with moving up, or eliminating, the income ceiling. The latter especially could eliminate the projected Social Security deficit all by itself.

Although I do belong to AARP, I take some exception to its periodic descent into scare tactics about these and other reasonable reforms. However, I understand why they do it because they share my chief reservation.

I do not trust the shredded remains of our legislative branch. Along with millions of others, I have to assume that the majority will lie; that they will make a determined effort to eliminate the entire system, which the wingnuts have hated since it was enacted. In their ideological zeal, they are quite capable of eliminating Social Security entirely without a moment's thought to what will happen to the people who depend mostly or entirely on Social Security. They certainly won't give a damn about breaking the commitment the system represents to those people. After all, the wingnuts in particular are owned by the same corporations who promised their workers pension plans, then sold them out.

Further, any idea of continuing to increase retirement age in a reasonable way rests on the assumption that years left to live at 65 is going to go on increasing. But beware the sine wave fallacy: put simply, this is the belief that a given variable will always move in the same direction. Today's increases in years left to live are on a collision course with the corporate age bigotry which has lately been enabled by the Supreme Court. A society which considers workers useless after age 45 is wedded to a principle which is likely to cause mean age at death to plummet. Pop goes the sine wave!

Perhaps that's what the wingnuts in Congress want, as long as it doesn't include them.

New spin on an old protest

The farce that is the so-called Super Committee is lurching in predictable directions. That's to say, we can't possibly tax the rich and end foreign military adventurism, and bring the deficit under control where it spun out of control. Instead, they say, let's do what the private sector has been doing for 30 years: treat commitments to older Americans, to which they have contributed all their lives, as mere scraps of paper.

Let me put one thing on the table. I have no problem with edging up the retirement age. (Mine is 66, not 65, because it's already happened. D'uh.) I see no impediment either to continuing to move up the maximum contribution level, or even (horrors!) eliminating the ceiling. There I differ with AARP, which has rather muddied the distinction between continuing a steady reform process and trashing the whole system. Trouble is, it sounds like all the talk of dumping Social Security and Medicare has infected the Super's deliberations.

The "die-in" has a longish history, going back to the Vietnam era. Properly stage-managed, it has always been an effective form of protest, typically aimed at wars and such.

My modest proposal is for the generation that began by going out to end war and stuff to check out in the same way. If the Supers effectively eliminate Medicare and Social Security, then let's think. Without Social Security of Medicare, most of us won't be able to afford health care and many of us won't be able to afford food, clothing and shelter. We can't work full-time, or beyond the clerical or retail level, because the age bigots don't want us in the office.

The capitalists and their Republican lapdogs want those of us in this fix to go out and die in the nearest ditch without frightening the horses. Suppose we don't. Suppose we hop a few buses, go to Washington, and die on the Capitol steps. I mean actually die. No too hard. Without health insurance*, if my meds run out suddenly, I have two or three days to live. That's enough time for the bus ride, to get out a press release, and to choose a photogenic spot on Capitol Hill. Time also for a terse, effective sign to explains what's up. Multiply that by 10,000 or so and you have quite a demonstration. Are the Capitol police up to removing 10,000 bodies?

In saner times, one would expect that even the threat of thousands of citizen deaths as a consequence of insane political posturing would cool a few jets.
I'm not betting on it. I think I'll take the train instead of the bus: so far no one has suggested eliminating Amtrak's excellent senior discounts.

If the Committee is indeed Super, somebody needs to get the kryptonite out of the meeting room.

*
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Already, I've discovered that Medicare Part D doesn't cover my dernier resort, Klonapin. I won't die suddenly when it cuts off: unfortunately.

Social Security and the age thing

In theory, I think raising the Social Security retirement age is one good and logical step toward getting our house in order. After all, anyone my age already reaches full retirement age at 66, not 65. (It is a constant surprise how many younger people don't know that.) In practice, I have reservations, to wit:

1) Can we trust the lap-dogs of the people who have spent the last 30 years cheating--yes, cheating--their workers out of the pensions that they relied on for their retirement? Any tinkering with Social Security has to come with defences against this sort of thing. Putting Congress on Social Security is a good place to start, but it may need more. I've worked for the very rich. I know how they think, and in general they have no problem with older Americans dying by the roadside, as long as someone sweeps up the corpses so they don't frighten the horses. Cut the deck before starting this reform.

2) Living until 90 is a statistical construct, subject to many variables. Depriving the older poor of retirement income and health care is one of those variables. The more the reactionaries get their way, the more likely it is that "years left to live" (a more accurate statistical term than life expectancy) will decline, not increase. Don't make changes based solely upon this one, vulnerable measurement.

3) During my time of un- and under-employment, it has become clear that in the near future most "careers" will run from age 25 to 45. Age bigotry is entrenched in corporate America. If present mindsets are allowed to persist, the nation will have an entire generation greeting customers at Walmart between 45 and retirement age. This just at the time we have made the retirement age a moving target. This too introduces a factor that is likely to cause life expectancy to decline. What if anything will reform do to adjust corporate attitudes and keep people over 45 working?

4) Finally, remember that all those jolly age projections may work for the elite and professional classes, but they aren't realistic for the working class, now. For anyone in the sort of physical occupation praised in TV truck commercials, 66 is a stretch now. Age 90, for men at least, is absurd. I see this every day I work. Time to get out and see how the other half lives before dicking around with anything in the social safety net.

I'll save Keynesian rants about the benefits of deficits for some other time.