I met too many of the older generation at Tea Parties - they still wanted to keep their SS and Medicare - after all , "they paid for it"
No, you allowed the government to steal
We didn't allow sh*t, there was no more an option then than
there is now. How are you doing with that telling Obama to
go kiss himself? Correct, not one iota. Don't come for my
corn pone; there won't be a fight.
In defense of the older ones, Weisshaupt, Charles has a point.
My parents have been voting Republican for all their lives, even living in the Dem cesspool that has almost always been NJ. We were fed good Italian-style food, and well, but there wasn't a lot of soda or junk. My mother had an orange juice rule -- only in the morning -- which meant that the last two ounces always went sour.
They've taken one big vacation, to Hawaii, for which they paid by my mother stashing house money in her purse every week. One. Never bought a new car; my father was a mechanic and he found good used ones and kept them running. None of their three children went to college, but they paid for three modest weddings (alright, two; my younger sister was a bitch) and lent house down-payment money for two of three -- for which I doubt they ever were repaid -- and co-signed the loan for my brother's tavern. My mother worked most of her life, much of my childhood and until she was sixty-two. And she snuck to me a thousand dollars to tide me over one of the worst times of my single-twenty's life. Neither of them went to college -- my father got a GED while in the military because he quit high school right before graduation over the issue of a Sharkskin suit for the prom. His father died while he was in Korea and he's still pissed off at the Red Cross over the donuts and coffee issue, and because they were less than no help getting him home for the funeral.
They took in mom's mother when my uncle, the alcoholic and ne'er-do-well died, and she lived with them for ten years and they saw to her, aside from what the SS/Medicare money, that had been taken from
her pay all of
her working life, bought.
They were able to save a little and invest a little. A little, despite my Mother being a squirreler. The FICA/SS/Medicare money deducted from the pay of both my parents could and would have gone toward paying for their retirement, but they had no choice in that. And of the SS checks they get, taxes are deducted still, and the govenment changed the accounting on that right before she retired to a calculation based on the last twenty quarters of one's working life instead of one based on the whole of one's working life.
I'm sure there are many elders for which means-testing would mean no change in their "life-style" because they all did well and are reputed to be the wealthiest amongst us. I'm equally as sure there are many like my parents from whom the government stole their independence.
Gunsmith and I are in a position to do what we can for them, but they'll take very little, and I doubt we could cover my Mother's second bout with cancer without putting us all in the poorhouse. (Too bad there wasn't an insurance policy they could have, and would have bought, instead of being left to the tender mercies of Medicare bureaucrats.) As it is, we helped my brother over his recent health troubles with a tide-over for his auto-repair business until he went back to work too soon.
I'm eleven years older than Gunsmith and I won't be signing up for my government "benefits" at the given age because we have the luxury, for now, of my piggy-backing on what we pay for his/our medical insurance, but once he's done or dead, so will I be. Unless something changes.
TMI, probably.
