TO THE EDITOR:
Divide and conquer — an old trick of conservatives — is the basis of the Monday letter from Triangle Republican Women President Janie Wagstaff. She argues that young people should be angry about a “wildly skewed entitlement system” that redistributes wealth from the young to the old.
This is a straw man argument designed to shift blame for our nation’s economic woes onto the poor, elderly, minorities — anybody but the upper 1 percent of the U.S. population, who are the only group to have benefited while the rest of the country suffered during the Great Recession.
Social Security is a self-financed program, separate from the federal budget, funded by the 6.2-percent payroll tax paid by workers and employers. This is not robbing from the young to pay for an old, “entitled” class. The young will also benefit from Social Security when they retire, despite conservative lies designed to scare younger workers that it “won’t be there” for them when they retire.
Social Security has a surplus of $2.8 trillion in treasury bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Social Security does face a long-term shortfall, but can pay all benefits through about 2033 — and 75 percent after that. That shortfall can be easily fixed by increasing the wage limit on the payroll tax, which is currently $113,700. Why not make it unlimited?
Everyone should pay payroll tax on every penny of income. That would fund Social Security at full benefits — perhaps even increasing benefits — in perpetuity.
Blaming the older generation for the dire straits of the younger one is simply the latest ruse in the conservative campaign to destroy Social Security. At a time when employer pensions have become scarce and millions face financial uncertainty in old age, Social Security has become an even more critical component of retirement security for older Americans.
Instead of attempting to pit groups against one another, let’s have a reasoned and realistic debate about how we as a nation ensure that Social Security meets the needs of today’s retirees as well as serving the young people who will need retirement security in the future.
Debra Beller
Chapel Hill
