About Those 'Greedy' Seniors

More Social Security Nonsense

"Consider that for about 20 percent of retirees, every penny of their income comes from Social Security. Social Security provides half or more of the income of nearly two-thirds of the elderly..."

"According to AARP, in the year 2000, only 29 percent of seniors received income from private pensions; an additional 14 percent from government employee pensions... "

"Ah, but what about that rich golfer? I don't mean to pick on him, but the critics of entitlement programs always use folks like him to justify cuts. As it happens, an administration that says it's worried that the elderly will place too heavy a burden on the young has gone out of its way to transfer yet more money to our seniors -- as long as the seniors in question are really well-off."

"Consider President Bush's cut in the tax on dividends. When he pushed that reduction (a slightly scaled-down version eventually became law), he bragged about its impact on the elderly. "We are helping seniors who rely on dividends," he declared."

"But that's a pretty narrow slice of seniors. "The majority of elderly have fairly modest incomes and would receive little or nothing from this tax proposal," according to a 2003 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As for helping seniors, "nearly 43 percent of the benefits of the dividend exemption . . . would flow to the 2.5 percent of elderly people with incomes exceeding $200,000. More than three-quarters of the benefits that would go to the elderly from this tax cut would flow to the 19 percent of elderly with incomes above $75,000."

"In other words, this administration's tax policies favor the Palm Springs golfer over the Cleveland widow. And that doesn't even take into account the administration's obsession with repealing all inheritance taxes. To help that widow and her grandchildren would it really be too much to ask that estates of more than, say, $8 million or $10 million, pay at least some inheritance levies?"