Retirees In Action

A message from PEF Retirees President Steve Muscarella
Be outraged over unfair economic disparities

Recent news articles about senior poverty in America should raise alarm and strengthen our resolve to ensure our country maintains the ideals on which it was founded.

One headline reads: “More seniors seeking help from food pantries.” The New York City Coalition Against Hunger reported, “68 percent of responding agencies were seeing an increase in senior citizens.”

Older Americans on fixed incomes have been hit disproportionately hard with the downturn in the economy. Despite what skewed cost-of-living statistics indicate, food prices, utilities and other necessities are costing much more. A fallen stock market, depreciating real estate values, and the loss of 401K and dividend income have depleted retirement funds and retirees’ nest eggs.
Many elderly feel they are being gouged by the health care industry. Some report their premiums have risen more than 50 percent while benefits have been reduced.

Yet many in society have not had to struggle with hard times. In 2008, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch lost $55 billion between them, but paid out $9 billion in bonuses. After AIG was rescued by a $170 billion taxpayer bailout, the company went right ahead with plans to pay millions in bonuses to employees who toppled the company.

In 1965, the average chief executive in the U.S. was paid 24 times as much as the average worker. In 2007, it was 275 times.

President Obama had sharp words for those corporate executives: “You guys are drawing down $10 million, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year … in decades, and you guys caused the problem.”

In 1896, William Jennings Bryan warned us: “There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way through every class which rests upon them.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 36 million people live below the poverty line in America. Ten percent of all seniors live in poverty.

I’ve had enough of “trickle down” economics. These policies have caused nothing more than gross inequity, hardship and greed.

It was once accepted that strong middle and working classes with adequate purchasing power would provide the economic engine this country needed to grow and succeed. After 114 years, William Jennings Bryan still has it right.