From a letter to my congressman, Adam Smith, Ninth Congressional District, State of Washington:
Congressman Smith:
Thank you for your recent letter to me in regard to "the Social Security privatization retirement age."
I am a bit mystified as to what that might be.
I do have concerns about the "privatization of social security" as quite a separate issue from the retirement age for being eligible for social security, which I believe is currently 67 for those born in 1960 and thereafter, but certain legislators are desirous of raising that age to 69 or 70, to theoretically prolong the solvency of the social security fund.
The letter continued:
I suspect that I specifically wrote you concerning changing the retirement age to older than it is currently.
You see, I’m not quite sure if you are aware of this, but one of the problems our nation is having with the financing of the social security fund is that so many Americans find themselves without employment, which means that they are unable to contribute to the social security fund.
Another term for that situation is JOBLESSNESS. To me, it is quite apparent that a major reason for this JOBLESSNESS occurrence is the outsourcing of American jobs by our president and legislators heedlessly signing onto free trade agreements without considering the consequences of signing onto such documents. These free trade agreements seem to send millions of American jobs to places like Mexico, China, India and elsewhere, when at the very same time there are millions of Americans who would much rather be working everyday than sitting around at home collecting inadequate unemployment checks.
Americans do not take well to idleness, to JOBLESSNESS. We need occupation, most assuredly occupation which pays enough to put a roof over one’s head, food on one’s table, support for one’s dependents, adequate to also contribute to upkeep for our nation, state and local services, transportation, bridges, roads, police, firefighters, these things which serve the common good, as well as being able to put aside a bit for one’s old age to shore up meager social security payments, not to mention paying for the advanced education of one’s children, inasmuch as the U.S. is not as advanced as other industrial nations in providing college education and trade training for their young people.
In addition to having to face up to their enormous education indebtedness because our nation is so stupid and shortsighted compared to MORE ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL NATIONS, it simply is not nice for our young people to have to also confront the terrible specter of JOBLESSNESS.
At the same time as our nation’s corporations and legislators are united in contributing to American unemployment, that would be JOBLESSNESS, by outsourcing good-paying American jobs, it most assuredly is not a good idea to add to that unemployment, that is to say American JOBLESSNESS, by forcing our nation’s elders to work additional years before they can collect social security, thus depriving our nation’s young people from the employment they need to earn a living and pay off their horrific education loans – high-cost education loans made necessary because our nation is too damned stupid to follow the lead of MORE ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL NATIONS who invest in the advanced education of their young people – because these people are much smarter than we are.
Because of my concerns about American unemployment, that would be JOBLESSNESS, as well the evils of outsourcing, blindly signing onto free trade agreements and raising the retirement age for social security as that not very intelligent man Alan Simpson would have us do, I must hope that you would pay heed to my concerns rather than to the greedy concerns of corporate America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and that you would do all that you can possibly do to prevent the raising of the retirement age any further in order to prevent the further unemployment, that would be the JOBLESSNESS, of our nation's young people who desperately need work in order to pay off their education loans because we as a nation are so stupid and stupidly refuse to invest in our young people.