It’s tough out there for seniors, and since the economy is going gangbusters, why not give them a little raise? After all, cost of living increases for those on Social Security have been tiny—or nonexistent—in recent years. In 2015, CEOs got a 3.9 percent raise—and seniors living on Social Security got bupkis. Hoping to correct that obvious mistake, I recently proposed a bill to stitch up the tax loophole that lets corporations take a tax deduction whenever they give an executive a bonus over a million dollars, with the idea that we could use the same money to give seniors (and veterans and people with disabilities) a one-time 3.9 percent raise. Corporations could still dispense those bonuses; they just wouldn’t be getting tax subsidies from everyone else. Made sense to me.
But—no surprise—the Republicans wouldn’t let the bill get anywhere. And also no surprise: I was beyond frustrated. I wanted to call every one of those naysayers and yell, “You try paying rent, utilities, grocery bills, car expenses, insurance, and health-care copays on $1,348 a month—then come back in here and vote.”
Gina tries not to get too anxious about her own future, but she often worries about her coworkers. Once, she talked about Hank, the produce manager at the Walmart where she works. Hank is sixty-five, but he can’t even think about retirement. In fact, he worries about losing this job and wonders where he could earn another paycheck. Gina paused. Hank’s not alone—his mother works at the Dollar Tree forty-five minutes away. “She’s eighty-seven years old,” Gina said. “She had her knees replaced so she can keep working. She has to work.”
Good grief! I’m glad that Hank’s mom is still able to get up and go to work at eighty-seven. But is that America’s retirement plan: work until you drop dead? Can we really call this progress?
One in five Americans is still working after age sixty-five, but that’s a short-term solution at best. And for people who physically can’t perform their jobs anymore—construction workers who have been beat up by the job, nurses who have spent years holding up tottering patients or rolling them over in bed, teachers who have picked up children all day long in preschool, kitchen workers who are on their feet all day and carrying heavy loads—it’s often a real struggle to keep working until sixty-five, much less beyond. Darren’s arthritis is starting to cripple his hands, and he often needs a boost to get out of a chair—and he’s only in his fifties. Even so, he is still out there day after day, bidding for jobs and trying to pull in enough money so the family doesn’t have to hit the food pantry early. No wonder Gina can’t explain their retirement plan. It’s the same as Hank’s mom’s plan: work till you drop.
For someone who has a home that is fully paid for, Social Security might be enough to cover their other expenses. But an increasing number of Americans are entering their retirement years still shouldering a heavy mortgage. Today nearly one in three homeowners sixty-five or older is still carrying a mortgage—and the amount of mortgage debt has jumped 82 percent in just a decade. Rent is getting higher too, and finding housing that is accessible for older adults is a tough challenge in most communities.
More mortgages and bigger mortgages are weighing down a lot of seniors, but for many of them, selling the family home isn’t a good option. An estimated 3.5 million people fifty or older owe more than their homes are worth.
So how are they making it? Even though they are employing lots of strategies to save money, millions of seniors are slipping into debt. They cover basic expenses by using credit cards, and in many cases they won’t be able to pay off that debt. For more and more seniors who find themselves in a downward spiral, bankruptcy is the only answer.
The story of today’s seniors—the need to work longer, the mounting debts, the slide into bankruptcy—is mostly a bleak continuation of the bigger story of what has happened to America’s working families over the last generation. The squeeze caused by flat wages and rising expenses, the relentless chipping away at steady hours and predictable schedules, and the risks of trying to make it in an increasingly uncertain world take their toll. These problems translate into less savings and higher debts that pile up over time. And as challenging as these problems can be during the working years, they land a crushing blow at retirement.
People work hard for most of their lives, and they hope to retire with some dignity. For the majority, this means living independently; they aim to have enough money to cover their expenses without having to rely on their children. But for millions of Americans, that dream of independence is dropping away.
At eighty-seven, Hank’s mom doesn’t want to make it harder for Hank, so five days a week she gets up, takes her medicines, pulls on her clothes, fills her thermos with coffee, and leaves home in time to punch the clock at Dollar Tree. Her plan is to keep pushing herself out the door at eighty-eight. And eighty-nine. And ninety. And forever.
THE LAST THREADS OF FAITH
My brother David was the kid with the paper route when he was eight, and he was buying and selling cars by the time he was fourteen. He was always up by five a.m., and he always had some deal going. After he got out of the army, he started his own small business, and when that one didn’t work out, he started another and then another. His nervous energy and quick smile made him a natural salesman, and he put it all on the line to build a life for his wife and kids. The kids are grown up, and his wife lost a battle with breast cancer. And in the end, he got caught up in the larger economic hurricanes that swept through America. Today he and his dog, Blondie, live on his Social Security and some family help.
We were on the phone a while back, talking about the economy—the rising stock market, record corporate profits, CEOs making tens of millions of dollars. David paused for a moment, then said, “Did you hear about the three guys sitting in a bar, having a few beers, when Bill Gates walks in?”
I’m always the straight man in these exchanges. “No. So what happened?”
“One guy yelled, ‘Woo-hoo! On average, everyone in the bar is now a billionaire!’”
And there it is. On average, we’re doing great.
It’s time to raise this question: Is this the best that capitalism has to offer? A booming stock market and a rich payoff for those with big investment portfolios and fancy corporate jobs, while everyone else is left hanging on by their fingernails?
Like everyone else, I want our economy to be great. But an economy is great only if it produces the things we value most, things like security and a chance for our children to do better than we did.
Those blind spots in our economic headlines are hiding a lot of misery. GDP, corporate profits, and employment stats give us important measures of economic activity, but they don’t tell us everything we need to know. Our riches—and our aching pain—can’t be measured by lumping all of us together. Instead of boasting about terrific averages, we need to focus on who is benefitting from a growing GDP and who cashes in on those corporate profits and what employment looks like to the tens of millions of people who draw a weekly paycheck.
We should do better. We should be measuring our successes and failures by testing the way we live day to day, person by person and family by family. Those tests should be pretty straightforward:
Is our economy producing opportunities for pretty much anyone who works hard to get ahead?
Is our economy producing security,