Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Flu... or Conspiracy?
I have heard we have more cases and more dangerous strains of the flu now then ever before. I have been hearing since the late 1960's that the government, in its ever-increasing desire to develop biological weapons, has systematically released contagions in the subways of New York. I have been hearing since the late 1980's that our digging up of the Rain Forests has unearthed deadly diseases that are millions of years old and therefore have no modern antibodies. I have heard that perhaps the real "weapons of mass destruction" are viral and have already been released. I tend to believe they are all possible -- I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy.
I would like to place before you my own conspiracy theory.
I have come to believe there is a conspiracy all right, a conspiracy of clods. Ill-mannered, bullying, self-centered clods whose agenda is simple: turn the human race back into Cro-Magnons.
Watch the way people drive -- never letting you in, tail-gating, cutting you off, no consideration for your safety. What is Road Rage but a lack of politeness, of good manners.
Don’t we each have a clod in the lunch room or favorite restaurant -- someone who smacks their lips and never closes a mouth when chewing? Yuck!
We all use public restrooms. Tell me -- why don’t people wash their hands? We should all stop and wash hands at every opportunity. Think of every little thing we each touch every day from doorknobs to money (and we don’t want to think about what disgusting garbage is really on money!).
But the clods’ biggest success has to be the spread of flu virus. The clods never cover a sneeze or a cough, preferring to spread the contagions, some of them deadly, in crowds, in offices, in stores and malls, then indiscriminately touch touch touching everything they can, insuring a mass outbreak. I am now surrounded by dripping, sniffling, snorting, raspy throated people that more resemble the cro-magnons with each passing day. The clods are winning in Michigan.
The flu virus is contagious one day before any symptoms appear and for up to seven days after making someone sick. Covering the mouth and nose with tissue when sneezing and coughing is not an Old Wives Tale -- it is basic etiquette, which happens to actually work. And cleaning and sanitizing hands after catching the germs in a tissue is etiquette, too. Others will breathe safer as we join the army of homo-sapiens to fight the clods. Wash your hands, try not to touch your face (especially nose, mouth, or eyes), and do everything you can to help the human race stay healthy and safe. Use the rules of etiquette that only the human brain can appreciate.
Please, join the battle. Be polite, be patient. Etiquette is not an outdated concept. It is the only weapon against ignorance, the clods’ spread of flu virus, and true mass destruction of our species.
I have heard we have more cases and more dangerous strains of the flu now then ever before. I have been hearing since the late 1960's that the government, in its ever-increasing desire to develop biological weapons, has systematically released contagions in the subways of New York. I have been hearing since the late 1980's that our digging up of the Rain Forests has unearthed deadly diseases that are millions of years old and therefore have no modern antibodies. I have heard that perhaps the real "weapons of mass destruction" are viral and have already been released. I tend to believe they are all possible -- I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy.
I would like to place before you my own conspiracy theory.
I have come to believe there is a conspiracy all right, a conspiracy of clods. Ill-mannered, bullying, self-centered clods whose agenda is simple: turn the human race back into Cro-Magnons.
Watch the way people drive -- never letting you in, tail-gating, cutting you off, no consideration for your safety. What is Road Rage but a lack of politeness, of good manners.
Don’t we each have a clod in the lunch room or favorite restaurant -- someone who smacks their lips and never closes a mouth when chewing? Yuck!
We all use public restrooms. Tell me -- why don’t people wash their hands? We should all stop and wash hands at every opportunity. Think of every little thing we each touch every day from doorknobs to money (and we don’t want to think about what disgusting garbage is really on money!).
But the clods’ biggest success has to be the spread of flu virus. The clods never cover a sneeze or a cough, preferring to spread the contagions, some of them deadly, in crowds, in offices, in stores and malls, then indiscriminately touch touch touching everything they can, insuring a mass outbreak. I am now surrounded by dripping, sniffling, snorting, raspy throated people that more resemble the cro-magnons with each passing day. The clods are winning in Michigan.
The flu virus is contagious one day before any symptoms appear and for up to seven days after making someone sick. Covering the mouth and nose with tissue when sneezing and coughing is not an Old Wives Tale -- it is basic etiquette, which happens to actually work. And cleaning and sanitizing hands after catching the germs in a tissue is etiquette, too. Others will breathe safer as we join the army of homo-sapiens to fight the clods. Wash your hands, try not to touch your face (especially nose, mouth, or eyes), and do everything you can to help the human race stay healthy and safe. Use the rules of etiquette that only the human brain can appreciate.
Please, join the battle. Be polite, be patient. Etiquette is not an outdated concept. It is the only weapon against ignorance, the clods’ spread of flu virus, and true mass destruction of our species.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
An Evening at the Capitol
At the end of a nice evening out, I had escorted Michele back to her vehicle, when during a playful post-first-date conversation of kittens and llamas, a middle-aged man approached us and asked for thirty cents. Not a dollar, or two, or even fifty cents, but precisely thirty. I reached into my pocket, and found a total of two quarters, which I offered him. "But, that's too much," he protested, "and I don't have change." I told him not to worry about it, and he thanked me, and began to recite a poem he had written, about birthdays. He then recited another, a take-off on "Twas the Night Before Christmas," reminiscent of dreams of escape he had during his most recent stint in prison. After that, I was hooked. I gave my date a hug goodbye and she drove away, with me offering to walk the gentleman a mile or so to Washington Ave.
"Yard Dog," as he's known to other homeless in the area, and even to the police, is in actuality a relatively short, mustached 50-year old Vietnam veteran named David Manix, who's been on the street about a year, since his latest release from prison. During the next hour and a half, the two of us walked around downtown Lansing, by the Capitol building and Kositcheks where I recently bought a new suit, by the Cooley Law Library and by empty parking garages, down sidestreets and even alleyways, in the biting wind and breath-catching cold, discussing everything from drugs to race relations to world history to sex. And of course, from him, more increasingly good poetry.
"I don't like it in there," he said at one point, responding to my inquiry about the "Jesus Saves" Rescue Mission we passed. "Too preachy, too religious. Plus, they make you take a breathalyzer the second you step in the door before they'll even help you." He pointed off to the North. "Now, the VOA over there, those people I respect. If it's really bad out, I can rely on them." A police cruiser passed, and he waved enthusiastically. "Hello America!" he shouted. The officer stopped for a while, and I suspected that my traveling companion might have been picked up had I not been in attendance, so I simply smiled and we continued our conversation. "Actually, I don't mind being picked up," Yard Dog disclosed. "Usually they're my saviors, not my captors, and I tell them so."
Yard Dog -- oh, hell, that just sounds ridiculous -- David then asked me to pull up the back of his shirt, to see a tattoo. We were on the very public sidewalk of Michigan Ave, about a block from the Capitol, so I was hesitant, but he insisted, so I did as instructed. His back was indeed nearly half covered by an elaborate (and extraordinarily impressive) homemade tattoo, with three large roses as its focal point, and the calligraphied text: "In Memoriam: May, Chris". "Chris was my sister, who committed suicide, though it was ruled drunk driving, but I know she got drunk and hit the tree on purpose," David explained, "and my other sister, May... she died of AIDS in '84." After the war, he had been a low-end foreman for a rail company, and had taken one of his workers home to dinner a few times. The worker took a liking to his sister, who he was living with at the time, and eventually they moved in together. "But he was bisexual, and she didn't know, and he gave it to her. Most people didn't even know if they had it then, and she never tried intravenous drugs or did anything wrong, other than him." He went on to explain the third rose was for his last remaining sibling, his only surviving sister, who he prayed would outlive him, and whose name would therefore never have to be added.
As he was zipping up his coat, a small plastic bottle of Popov vodka fell out. "Drinking water," he said playfully. When I bent down to pick it up for him, he stopped me. "Jesus, no -- if a cop sees you touching it, then you'll get in trouble! This is my problem."
An elderly black man rode up on a bicycle, obviously a friend of David's ("acquaintances, not friends" he would later correct me) and the two had a brief chat in what can best be described as a sort of "homeless code," involving things like "will you be down at the 120 later," and so on. When the bicycled man eyed me suspiciously, David introduced me as "my new friend John -- he's with the State Police." The look of horror on the man's face was just enough for Yard Dog, for he burst into laughter and admitted he was fooling, that I was actually a musician, instead. After he bicycled away, I pressed David about the meaning of the "120." "Well... that's a motel room," he explained. "For crack cocaine." (I'm assuming that he offered the full technical term for my benefit; I can't imagine actual crack users sounding so formal about it.) So we talked about drug use for a bit, and he defended his occasional indulgence in a most unusual way -- "hey, cocaine leaves the body after only three days, but pot lasts 27 to 30 days, so really, crack's a lot smarter if you don't know when your next drug test will be." I didn't have a witty comeback for that one.
Every time we passed a cigarette butt with some decent puffage left, David would pick it up and place it into an Altoids tin. (This made me laugh, since my father always stores his cigarettes in Altoids tins, and the parallel was even more striking when David later revealed his Bugler tobacco pack and Zig Zag papers -- the exact tobacco and papers my father still, to this day, rolls himself and smokes filterless.) As we walked, every trash can was routinely checked for bottles, and every fast food cup was shaken for liquid. What I thought was particularly interesting was that every item David picked up, even cigarette butts, that he couldn't use or didn't want, was carried by him until we passed a trash can, and then thrown away in its proper place. Better habit than most of us non-homeless people, although I suppose, to someone living on the streets, exterior litter might be thought of the same way I'd pick up trash in my own house or yard. (Either that, or perhaps cops use "littering" as an excuse for arrest.)
The longest part of our conversation, however, after turning south on Washington and walking further away from the Capitol, was about Vietnam. He explained -- with pantomimed, gutwrenching detail, even crawling on his belly on the cold pavement -- exactly what a "tunnel rat" such as himself was, what they did, how they did it, how they held the weapon, etc. "I killed a lot of men, John," he said, newfound weight and seriousness in the details. "The Gooks were human beings. They were just doing what we were doing. They were just doing what their government told them to do, nothing more. I killed a lot of men. I'm not proud of it. It changes your life."
Then, he added: "hey, at least one in ten of us out here is a Vietnam vet." I nodded solemnly, allowing him a certain level of exaggeration. But you know what's scary? I looked it up. It's one in six. Think about that for a second. One in every six homeless people in this country fought in Vietnam. That's... incomprehensibly staggering, considering the relatively small number of people alive today who were in Vietnam in the first place. I checked a dozen sources. I couldn't believe it. When David said "one in ten" I was thinking it couldn't possibly be that high, but one in six?
Anyway, he went on to explain the end of his service, how they were going to give him a BCD (which he later defined as a "Bad Conduct Discharge" -- I didn't ask for details), which would have left him without VA benefits, and how he worked out something in a special Dregs (?) unit to allow for a General Discharge instead, and then followed with a very detailed explanation of how VA benefits work, and how he lost his eligibility for them, which I couldn't quite grasp logistically, and I think he recognized that, laughed, and apologized for "boring" me. But it wasn't boring -- I just couldn't work my mind around having those worries, those issues, that past. Later on, when it came up that I was diabetic, he looked crestfallen and apologetic, and felt so sorry for me, that he couldn't imagine what I had to go through. Me! I didn't know what to say. What's the right response to that? My life has been blessed beyond reasonable description compared to Mr. Manix. So I said what I feel, that considering all that I have, feeling like a victim because of my illness would be ridiculous. David excitedly shook my hand. "See, that's right. I'm not a victim because of Vietnam. I'm who I'm deciding to be. I tell blacks that they have to stop being victims because of slavery -- no one alive today was ever in slavery, I never enslaved nobody. Besides, blacks were selling blacks to us back then and hell, if you go back to Egypt, blacks were enslaving whites and Jews, right? It's just a circle. We're all equal. Everyone's always looking to blame someone else. So good for you!" And it occurred to me that during all of his stories of life, alcoholism, drugs, Vietnam, the death of two sisters, all of it -- never once did he portray himself as a victim, nor did he blame any of these events on "society" or "the government" or even circumstance. He told me these stories so I might see a clear picture, not for sympathy, but understanding. He remains, despite all that he's gone through, despite all his terrible choices in life, a proud man. And other than the initial request for thirty cents, he hadn't asked me for a thing.
It was time for me to call for a ride, and David went to flag down a passing van to borrow a cell phone, before I showed him I had a cell of my own. "Ha! And I was willing to jump into traffic for you," he laughed. I called a cab to pick me up on the corner of Washington and Kalamazoo (the guy at the cab company laughed and called me "brave"), and we waited. "Hey," David said, "lemme give you something," and began to empty his pockets. He took out everything from chapstick to tobacco to toothpaste to those individual tooth flossers ("what, you don't floss?" he said, amused at my apparently unconcealed surprise at this item) until finding a pen, which he gave to me as I found a brown bag on the ground to use as paper. "I'm going to give you my mother's number. Her name is Madeline. I see her once in a while, but I feel like shit that she's listening to the police scanner every night, listening for me." He gave me the number. "If for some reason you ever need to talk to her, make sure you say David Manix, alright? Just, don't call me Yard Dog." Admittedly, I couldn't imagine why I'd ever need to call his mother, but it seemed to mean a lot to him, so I nodded somberly, pocketed the info, and returned the pen. My cab pulled up, and I offered him a ride, and he accepted, asking the driver to drop him off at a nearby motel which was more or less on the way. David thanked me again for the company and conversation, and for the ride, and even recited one final rhyming poem of his, another about prison, to the cab driver and I before we arrived. "Get inside where it's warm," I said as he exited the vehicle, and my companion for the past hour and a half took the time for a final handshake, before closing the door gently behind him. Given the now nearly intolerable cold, I was just happy to know he would be somewhere other than the concrete slap of a windowless parking garage for the evening.
Eh, who am I kidding. I know it was almost certainly the mystical crack-filled room "120." But I avoided looking at the posted exterior room numbers just in case, just so I wouldn't know for sure, as my taxi sped away towards home.
At the end of a nice evening out, I had escorted Michele back to her vehicle, when during a playful post-first-date conversation of kittens and llamas, a middle-aged man approached us and asked for thirty cents. Not a dollar, or two, or even fifty cents, but precisely thirty. I reached into my pocket, and found a total of two quarters, which I offered him. "But, that's too much," he protested, "and I don't have change." I told him not to worry about it, and he thanked me, and began to recite a poem he had written, about birthdays. He then recited another, a take-off on "Twas the Night Before Christmas," reminiscent of dreams of escape he had during his most recent stint in prison. After that, I was hooked. I gave my date a hug goodbye and she drove away, with me offering to walk the gentleman a mile or so to Washington Ave.
"Yard Dog," as he's known to other homeless in the area, and even to the police, is in actuality a relatively short, mustached 50-year old Vietnam veteran named David Manix, who's been on the street about a year, since his latest release from prison. During the next hour and a half, the two of us walked around downtown Lansing, by the Capitol building and Kositcheks where I recently bought a new suit, by the Cooley Law Library and by empty parking garages, down sidestreets and even alleyways, in the biting wind and breath-catching cold, discussing everything from drugs to race relations to world history to sex. And of course, from him, more increasingly good poetry.
"I don't like it in there," he said at one point, responding to my inquiry about the "Jesus Saves" Rescue Mission we passed. "Too preachy, too religious. Plus, they make you take a breathalyzer the second you step in the door before they'll even help you." He pointed off to the North. "Now, the VOA over there, those people I respect. If it's really bad out, I can rely on them." A police cruiser passed, and he waved enthusiastically. "Hello America!" he shouted. The officer stopped for a while, and I suspected that my traveling companion might have been picked up had I not been in attendance, so I simply smiled and we continued our conversation. "Actually, I don't mind being picked up," Yard Dog disclosed. "Usually they're my saviors, not my captors, and I tell them so."
Yard Dog -- oh, hell, that just sounds ridiculous -- David then asked me to pull up the back of his shirt, to see a tattoo. We were on the very public sidewalk of Michigan Ave, about a block from the Capitol, so I was hesitant, but he insisted, so I did as instructed. His back was indeed nearly half covered by an elaborate (and extraordinarily impressive) homemade tattoo, with three large roses as its focal point, and the calligraphied text: "In Memoriam: May, Chris". "Chris was my sister, who committed suicide, though it was ruled drunk driving, but I know she got drunk and hit the tree on purpose," David explained, "and my other sister, May... she died of AIDS in '84." After the war, he had been a low-end foreman for a rail company, and had taken one of his workers home to dinner a few times. The worker took a liking to his sister, who he was living with at the time, and eventually they moved in together. "But he was bisexual, and she didn't know, and he gave it to her. Most people didn't even know if they had it then, and she never tried intravenous drugs or did anything wrong, other than him." He went on to explain the third rose was for his last remaining sibling, his only surviving sister, who he prayed would outlive him, and whose name would therefore never have to be added.
As he was zipping up his coat, a small plastic bottle of Popov vodka fell out. "Drinking water," he said playfully. When I bent down to pick it up for him, he stopped me. "Jesus, no -- if a cop sees you touching it, then you'll get in trouble! This is my problem."
An elderly black man rode up on a bicycle, obviously a friend of David's ("acquaintances, not friends" he would later correct me) and the two had a brief chat in what can best be described as a sort of "homeless code," involving things like "will you be down at the 120 later," and so on. When the bicycled man eyed me suspiciously, David introduced me as "my new friend John -- he's with the State Police." The look of horror on the man's face was just enough for Yard Dog, for he burst into laughter and admitted he was fooling, that I was actually a musician, instead. After he bicycled away, I pressed David about the meaning of the "120." "Well... that's a motel room," he explained. "For crack cocaine." (I'm assuming that he offered the full technical term for my benefit; I can't imagine actual crack users sounding so formal about it.) So we talked about drug use for a bit, and he defended his occasional indulgence in a most unusual way -- "hey, cocaine leaves the body after only three days, but pot lasts 27 to 30 days, so really, crack's a lot smarter if you don't know when your next drug test will be." I didn't have a witty comeback for that one.
Every time we passed a cigarette butt with some decent puffage left, David would pick it up and place it into an Altoids tin. (This made me laugh, since my father always stores his cigarettes in Altoids tins, and the parallel was even more striking when David later revealed his Bugler tobacco pack and Zig Zag papers -- the exact tobacco and papers my father still, to this day, rolls himself and smokes filterless.) As we walked, every trash can was routinely checked for bottles, and every fast food cup was shaken for liquid. What I thought was particularly interesting was that every item David picked up, even cigarette butts, that he couldn't use or didn't want, was carried by him until we passed a trash can, and then thrown away in its proper place. Better habit than most of us non-homeless people, although I suppose, to someone living on the streets, exterior litter might be thought of the same way I'd pick up trash in my own house or yard. (Either that, or perhaps cops use "littering" as an excuse for arrest.)
The longest part of our conversation, however, after turning south on Washington and walking further away from the Capitol, was about Vietnam. He explained -- with pantomimed, gutwrenching detail, even crawling on his belly on the cold pavement -- exactly what a "tunnel rat" such as himself was, what they did, how they did it, how they held the weapon, etc. "I killed a lot of men, John," he said, newfound weight and seriousness in the details. "The Gooks were human beings. They were just doing what we were doing. They were just doing what their government told them to do, nothing more. I killed a lot of men. I'm not proud of it. It changes your life."
Then, he added: "hey, at least one in ten of us out here is a Vietnam vet." I nodded solemnly, allowing him a certain level of exaggeration. But you know what's scary? I looked it up. It's one in six. Think about that for a second. One in every six homeless people in this country fought in Vietnam. That's... incomprehensibly staggering, considering the relatively small number of people alive today who were in Vietnam in the first place. I checked a dozen sources. I couldn't believe it. When David said "one in ten" I was thinking it couldn't possibly be that high, but one in six?
Anyway, he went on to explain the end of his service, how they were going to give him a BCD (which he later defined as a "Bad Conduct Discharge" -- I didn't ask for details), which would have left him without VA benefits, and how he worked out something in a special Dregs (?) unit to allow for a General Discharge instead, and then followed with a very detailed explanation of how VA benefits work, and how he lost his eligibility for them, which I couldn't quite grasp logistically, and I think he recognized that, laughed, and apologized for "boring" me. But it wasn't boring -- I just couldn't work my mind around having those worries, those issues, that past. Later on, when it came up that I was diabetic, he looked crestfallen and apologetic, and felt so sorry for me, that he couldn't imagine what I had to go through. Me! I didn't know what to say. What's the right response to that? My life has been blessed beyond reasonable description compared to Mr. Manix. So I said what I feel, that considering all that I have, feeling like a victim because of my illness would be ridiculous. David excitedly shook my hand. "See, that's right. I'm not a victim because of Vietnam. I'm who I'm deciding to be. I tell blacks that they have to stop being victims because of slavery -- no one alive today was ever in slavery, I never enslaved nobody. Besides, blacks were selling blacks to us back then and hell, if you go back to Egypt, blacks were enslaving whites and Jews, right? It's just a circle. We're all equal. Everyone's always looking to blame someone else. So good for you!" And it occurred to me that during all of his stories of life, alcoholism, drugs, Vietnam, the death of two sisters, all of it -- never once did he portray himself as a victim, nor did he blame any of these events on "society" or "the government" or even circumstance. He told me these stories so I might see a clear picture, not for sympathy, but understanding. He remains, despite all that he's gone through, despite all his terrible choices in life, a proud man. And other than the initial request for thirty cents, he hadn't asked me for a thing.
It was time for me to call for a ride, and David went to flag down a passing van to borrow a cell phone, before I showed him I had a cell of my own. "Ha! And I was willing to jump into traffic for you," he laughed. I called a cab to pick me up on the corner of Washington and Kalamazoo (the guy at the cab company laughed and called me "brave"), and we waited. "Hey," David said, "lemme give you something," and began to empty his pockets. He took out everything from chapstick to tobacco to toothpaste to those individual tooth flossers ("what, you don't floss?" he said, amused at my apparently unconcealed surprise at this item) until finding a pen, which he gave to me as I found a brown bag on the ground to use as paper. "I'm going to give you my mother's number. Her name is Madeline. I see her once in a while, but I feel like shit that she's listening to the police scanner every night, listening for me." He gave me the number. "If for some reason you ever need to talk to her, make sure you say David Manix, alright? Just, don't call me Yard Dog." Admittedly, I couldn't imagine why I'd ever need to call his mother, but it seemed to mean a lot to him, so I nodded somberly, pocketed the info, and returned the pen. My cab pulled up, and I offered him a ride, and he accepted, asking the driver to drop him off at a nearby motel which was more or less on the way. David thanked me again for the company and conversation, and for the ride, and even recited one final rhyming poem of his, another about prison, to the cab driver and I before we arrived. "Get inside where it's warm," I said as he exited the vehicle, and my companion for the past hour and a half took the time for a final handshake, before closing the door gently behind him. Given the now nearly intolerable cold, I was just happy to know he would be somewhere other than the concrete slap of a windowless parking garage for the evening.
Eh, who am I kidding. I know it was almost certainly the mystical crack-filled room "120." But I avoided looking at the posted exterior room numbers just in case, just so I wouldn't know for sure, as my taxi sped away towards home.
Monday, December 08, 2003
Now You See It... Now You Still See It
For years, I have been hearing about the failing Social Security System. "They" have claimed we are running out of money; there won't be enough for the rest of us. "They" have said our aging population has been draining the funds for years.
"They" have said it so often, I actually found myself believing them. It is a terrible thing to be convinced that our grandparents are "living too long" and draining our futures. It's a terrible thing "they" are trying to make us believe.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics (part of the CDC), a person is expected to live 6 years longer then they would have been expected to live in back in 1931 when social security was first being conceived. A person retiring at 65 years of age in 1931 could expect to live another 13 years.. Today, a person retiring at 65 can expect to live 19 years. That is 6 additional years of social security. (Actually, I am striving to live to 100 just to see what I can see.)
However. . .
Let's look at some actual figures. At 14 years of age, I babysat (and cooked, cleaned, did laundry, etc.) for a family for 9 1/2 weeks at 35 cents per hour. The family withheld a portion of my pay to put into Social Security -- and here it is on my record! In 1963, Taxed Social Security Earnings of $129. How cool. And, I have worked almost every year since (minus the pregnant years). At the current rate, I will have earned about $1,000,000 in my lifetime if I work until I am 65 years of age. Also at the present rate, I will have put into Social Security about $70,000 and my employers will have contributed another $70,000 for me. I figure I will have earned money for 600 months. Counting my contributions and those of my employers, we have been contributing an average of $234 per month into the SSS. If we had put that money into a savings account with average 5% interest rates over 50 years, we would have accumulated $603,651 (WOW).
The Social Security System plans to pay me $1200 a month when I retire. With $603,651 in my SSS "savings account", I could draw $1200 a month PLUS annual 5% raises for cost of living increases for 37 years–I could live to be 102 years old and never ever take out a penny of someone else's money.
Compound that figure with the fact that most people don't live to be 102 years of age I now reckon we have plenty of funds. No wonder the GOP had to keep slapping down Clinton's greedy little fingers when he was trying to raid the SSS cookie jar. I can see how tempting it would be to "borrow" a little something to bolster up the coffers.
There is an Alliance to Privatize Social Security -- a group of bankers & investors drooling to get their hands on our money. They make claims like our children will have to pay 40% higher payroll taxes (in other words, 10% instead of 7% -- but it sounds more drastic to say "40% higher"). Where do they get that from? In case I live to 150 years of age? Privatizing proponents neglect to tell us that the SSS only uses about 1% of the funds for administration costs. Have private companies like banks and investor corporations ever come close to that level of self control?
Just because a dramatic story gets repeated in the audience-hungry press, just because it gets repeated repeatedly, doesn't make the story true. Since the press in the United States has absolutely no legal obligation nor moral desire to verify the information or misinformation they belch out at us in their so-called "news" reports, the press will continue to quote headline grabbing doomsayers. It sells papers. It guarantees viewers and listeners and readers. We will continue to be subjugated to quotes from researchers and pollsters that put whatever spin on the statistics that will back up whatever point they are trying to make. They choose who to quote and what to quote. The journalist never has to prove their statements are true, just that they are quoting the source accurately. And we are left to trudge through their contorted & distorted muck trying to find some fragment of truth. I finally know who "they" are.
I am so glad I took this time to figure out the actual numbers. I feel much better. And I hope you do too.
For years, I have been hearing about the failing Social Security System. "They" have claimed we are running out of money; there won't be enough for the rest of us. "They" have said our aging population has been draining the funds for years.
"They" have said it so often, I actually found myself believing them. It is a terrible thing to be convinced that our grandparents are "living too long" and draining our futures. It's a terrible thing "they" are trying to make us believe.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics (part of the CDC), a person is expected to live 6 years longer then they would have been expected to live in back in 1931 when social security was first being conceived. A person retiring at 65 years of age in 1931 could expect to live another 13 years.. Today, a person retiring at 65 can expect to live 19 years. That is 6 additional years of social security. (Actually, I am striving to live to 100 just to see what I can see.)
However. . .
Let's look at some actual figures. At 14 years of age, I babysat (and cooked, cleaned, did laundry, etc.) for a family for 9 1/2 weeks at 35 cents per hour. The family withheld a portion of my pay to put into Social Security -- and here it is on my record! In 1963, Taxed Social Security Earnings of $129. How cool. And, I have worked almost every year since (minus the pregnant years). At the current rate, I will have earned about $1,000,000 in my lifetime if I work until I am 65 years of age. Also at the present rate, I will have put into Social Security about $70,000 and my employers will have contributed another $70,000 for me. I figure I will have earned money for 600 months. Counting my contributions and those of my employers, we have been contributing an average of $234 per month into the SSS. If we had put that money into a savings account with average 5% interest rates over 50 years, we would have accumulated $603,651 (WOW).
The Social Security System plans to pay me $1200 a month when I retire. With $603,651 in my SSS "savings account", I could draw $1200 a month PLUS annual 5% raises for cost of living increases for 37 years–I could live to be 102 years old and never ever take out a penny of someone else's money.
Compound that figure with the fact that most people don't live to be 102 years of age I now reckon we have plenty of funds. No wonder the GOP had to keep slapping down Clinton's greedy little fingers when he was trying to raid the SSS cookie jar. I can see how tempting it would be to "borrow" a little something to bolster up the coffers.
There is an Alliance to Privatize Social Security -- a group of bankers & investors drooling to get their hands on our money. They make claims like our children will have to pay 40% higher payroll taxes (in other words, 10% instead of 7% -- but it sounds more drastic to say "40% higher"). Where do they get that from? In case I live to 150 years of age? Privatizing proponents neglect to tell us that the SSS only uses about 1% of the funds for administration costs. Have private companies like banks and investor corporations ever come close to that level of self control?
Just because a dramatic story gets repeated in the audience-hungry press, just because it gets repeated repeatedly, doesn't make the story true. Since the press in the United States has absolutely no legal obligation nor moral desire to verify the information or misinformation they belch out at us in their so-called "news" reports, the press will continue to quote headline grabbing doomsayers. It sells papers. It guarantees viewers and listeners and readers. We will continue to be subjugated to quotes from researchers and pollsters that put whatever spin on the statistics that will back up whatever point they are trying to make. They choose who to quote and what to quote. The journalist never has to prove their statements are true, just that they are quoting the source accurately. And we are left to trudge through their contorted & distorted muck trying to find some fragment of truth. I finally know who "they" are.
I am so glad I took this time to figure out the actual numbers. I feel much better. And I hope you do too.
Monday, December 01, 2003
Liberalbatross
Thomas Friedman, ultraleft anti-Bushie extraordinaire, had an extremely good take on Iraq in yesterday's New York Times (free membership required). It reminded me how the political left used to be the ones opposing dictators and supporting human rights abroad, demanding more resources and money overseas, and the overthrow of murderous tyrants. Now most "liberals" are ironically anti-liberation, passively (or actively) pro-dictatorship, viciously anti-semitic, and unable to see more than two chess moves ahead with regards to foreign policy.
If there was a Democratic candidate who was running on the human rights principle that we should be doing more to help the Iraqi people, not less (as all nine current Democratic candidates are advocating), they'd have a good chance of getting my vote. (I have pretty adamant disagreements with Bush on some other big issues, after all.) But as long as the so-called "liberals" keep saying things like "but how can we afford to help the suffering abroad when our 80 year olds need free perscription drugs," I'll choose to vote for someone whose positions and actions don't convey such indefensible selfishness.
Thomas Friedman, ultraleft anti-Bushie extraordinaire, had an extremely good take on Iraq in yesterday's New York Times (free membership required). It reminded me how the political left used to be the ones opposing dictators and supporting human rights abroad, demanding more resources and money overseas, and the overthrow of murderous tyrants. Now most "liberals" are ironically anti-liberation, passively (or actively) pro-dictatorship, viciously anti-semitic, and unable to see more than two chess moves ahead with regards to foreign policy.
If there was a Democratic candidate who was running on the human rights principle that we should be doing more to help the Iraqi people, not less (as all nine current Democratic candidates are advocating), they'd have a good chance of getting my vote. (I have pretty adamant disagreements with Bush on some other big issues, after all.) But as long as the so-called "liberals" keep saying things like "but how can we afford to help the suffering abroad when our 80 year olds need free perscription drugs," I'll choose to vote for someone whose positions and actions don't convey such indefensible selfishness.
