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.

Dumb phone, etc.

The week has been full of signs of age.

1) I signed up for Medicare Part A. Not that I wanted to. However, now that I'm imminently 65, it seems that my wife's employer (she's the one with the health plan) wants both of us off the hospitalisation rolls. There will be a Round Two to this, after we meet the spectacularly bored individual at the local office who deigned to answer my few questions.

2) I've long accepted that I have a dumb phone. We're in a family plan created by the offspring, so upgrades are in her hands. Someday it may happen. However, the lowest blow was this week's discovery that I have a dumb watch. Granted that I date myself by having a watch that I actually use to tell time, but the goddam thing didn't recognise Leap Day.

Never mind. When there are no clouds, there's a moon to admire. Americans are not very good at admiring the moon, which is worth a pause at every opportunity. Howling is optional.

Three weeks hence I get to sign up for a senior's Charlie Card. That'll wash out the fare increase, but if they cut my buses, I can't ride it downtown.