As an airline pilot, my age will force me out of a job in a few months when I turn 65. Consequently, I’m taking a much more personal interest in both Social Security and Medicare, which the Republicans are determined to do away with. It might be fun to watch as the Tea Partiers and Trumplets get exactly what they voted for, were it not for the fact that the hardship will fall on all the rest of us as well. And I expect that when it does, they will not blame their Greedy Old Party.
There are a couple of “alternative facts” that I’d like to discuss here briefly. First is the endlessly repeated claim that Social Security is going broke. You have to go outside the punditocracy to hear mention of the facts: Social Security had a surplus of $2.8 trillion at the end of 2015. As it is currently funded, there are sufficient resources to last for another 20 years without any benefit cuts to anyone. After that, if nothing is changed, around 2033 there would be what Socialsecurityworks.org calls a “modest funding gap” requiring increased revenues in order to continue to pay 100 percent of earned benefits. This is not the intractable problem that the GOP banksters and talking heads make it out to be, and here’s why: At present, Social Security is funded by a payroll tax of 6.2 percent on earnings capped at $118,500. If you’re fortunate enough to make that much, you contribute .062 x 118,500, or $7,347 yearly. If you make $200,000 per year or $300,000, $350 million or $10 billion, you still only contribute $7,347 per year because of the cap.
The payroll tax that funds Social Security is only on wages so investors and speculators pay nothing toward Social Security on their capital gains or their dividends. I would bet that if asked, most junior high school students could suggest the obvious solution to this supposedly “difficult” problem before the bell for the next class. For the “staring-you-in-the-face” challenged, here’s the answer: scrap the payroll tax cap and include investment income. That’s it. It’s truly that simple. And if high earners and rich speculators paid their fair share, benefits could actually be greatly expanded.
Next, let’s take a look at health care. To begin I’ll quote our Tweeter-in-chief:
“Now, I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”
How complex is it? So unbelievably complex that it’s presidentially mind-blowing that 20 other nations have been providing 100 percent of their citizens with guaranteed health care for decades. Wow. Too bad we can’t ask them how they do it. But if you listen to the talking heads, America has the best health care in the world. Just be sure to ignore a left wing, fake news magazine like Forbes, that reported in 2014 that the U.S. ranked 11th in overall health care behind the U.K., Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, France and Canada. The thing that is so puzzling is that the countries with better health care basically do it by having the government run it. Kind of like Medicare for all. Obama supported single-payer universal health care before he became president, then ruled it out because it doesn’t fit in with oligarchy’s guiding principle: greed. They claim we want “choices.” Approaching age 65, I received a 70-page booklet of choices on plans to augment Medicare part A. Like Trump says, it’s incredibly complicated. It boils down to choosing which coverage I won’t get — and how much I’ll pay for not getting it.
Personally, when it comes to health care I only want one choice: everything covered for everyone, just like those other 10 countries. It’s totally affordable if we tax everyone equitably and stop spending over $600 billion per year on dominating the world.
Jake Jacobs in a cargo airline pilot and Kailua-Kona resident who writes an opinion column for West Hawaii Today.