And they don’t even have to be virgins
by digby
Here’s a CNBC celebrity having a fit when Raul Grijalva suggests that Medicare shouldn’t be cut:
She seemed to be having a very hard time controlling herself.
Meanwhile, let’s have a little fact check, shall we? The Medicare cuts they are anticipating would likely affect people younger than the current crop of allegedly wealthy baby boomers.
And how are those damned boomers really doing anyway?
Americans nearing retirement age have suffered disproportionately after the financial crisis: along with the declining value of their homes, which were intended to cushion their final years, their incomes have fallen sharply.
The typical household income for people age 55 to 64 years old is almost 10 percent less in today’s dollars than it was when the recovery officially began three years ago, according to a new report from Sentier Research, a data analysis company that specializes in demographic and income data.
And this:
According to the Social Security Administration, the average worker’s Social Security income for current retirees is about $1,233 per month, and the average spouse’s income is $610 per month, for a total of $1,843 per month…
The median amount of annual income in 2010 is $42,700 for families headed by a person age 65 to 74 and $29,100 for households headed by someone age 75 and over. One important reason for the large difference between these two age groups is that the 65-to-74 age group includes many households where one or more people still work, while the age 75 and over household is probably fully retired.
Yeah, they’re all living large all right.
But the angry celebrity TV hostess said they should be means tested, by which I assume only those at the very top would be out of the program. The problem is that all the wealth in this country now belongs to a very tiny group of people. There just isn’t much money in means testing those who can truly afford it. So, we’d have to means test anyone who isn’t living in dire poverty. Which would put them in dire poverty. But then, that’s their problem, right? They should have gotten rich when they had the chance.
But all of that hardly matters. Failing to cut Medicare is upsetting the “Market” and SACRIFICES MUST BE MADE:
This is all faith based nonsense as that angry celebrity hostess proved when she nervously pointed to the stock market ticker and implied that Raul Grijalva even talking about going over the fiscal cliff was making the Market Gods angry. The sooner we recognize that the better.
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