Don’t blame Social Security for budget woes

To the editor:

Well, Robert J. Samuelson is still at it with his cruel, mean attitude toward the non-rich elderly in his Dec. 8 commentary, “Supersized government.”

Along with his diatribe against the social safety net in general, he makes the statement, “It is not in the national interest to subsidize Americans through Social Security and Medicare for the last 20 or 25 years of their lives.”

In the first place — and Mr. Samuelson surely knows this — Social Security and most of Medicare are financed by workers who contribute throughout their working lives. These programs, therefore, are not “subsidized” by the federal government. It is amazing how the elderly-hating element in our country keeps getting away with spreading the lie that they are.

Let me repeat once again the plain, unvarnished truth that because Social Security is self-funded through its own targeted tax paid by workers throughout their lives (and is running a surplus, or was until the Bush recession hit), it absolutely can’t possibly bear any fault for creating any deficit in the nation’s budget. What part of this is so hard to understand?

Even if Social Security were responsible, the fact remains that people are going to continue to get old without becoming rich — only 2 percent of the population does — so what is the solution? I expect the next idea to be floated by Mr. Samuelson’s ilk in the conservative world will be forced euthanasia for anybody unable to work or find work after a certain age.

Of course there is always the easy way out of pretending the poor elderly don’t exist — conservatives would do that now if they had the chance — and letting them die in the streets, like what happens in Fourth World countries today.

I do believe that — if the tea party supporters have their way — the United States is on the verge of becoming one of these countries where a few are amazingly rich and everybody else is starving.

DANIEL OLIViER

BULLHEAD CITY, ARIZ.