The Retirement Predicament Just Part Of Reagan Revolution.

[TheMastersNemesis]

Distressed seniors with no retirement are the result of the Reagan revolution. He pretty much said he would turn our economy to a low wage economy. By diminishing unions and "getting the government off peoples back" he did just what he said he would do. Gutting unions and degrading government institutions like department of labor and other policing agencies he created a free run for businesses to tear up the social contract with workers that had begun after WWII.

Now business has free run with the labor market. Workers are no more than expendable commodities to be used up and tossed. Every where is work at will and many government functions are privatized and run by corporations for profit.

Plus globalization of our economy began in earnest with Republican policies as voters kept putting in conservative and GOP politicians who actually promised to shred the safety net. Run as a Democratic pro labor liberal and you got our ass kicked clear to Hades. So the Democrats went to the right because voters would NOT vote for communist liberals who supported unions.

So the Reagan revolution marched on. It continues to march on with its trickle down economics. Voters have some blame for this predicament because they allowed the GOP to game them.

[Skittles]

1. Reagan made greed and idiocy fashionable

America is still feeling the Reagan Revolution

[pansypoo53219]

5. don't forget the poor bashing/RACISM of welfare queens. BLACKS on welfare. divide & conquer.

[awoke_in_2003]

10. That is the root

of why many back this shit. They want to stick it to minorities.

[Jim Beard]

2. I didn't vote for him but a lot of other Boomers did.

[Rod Beauvex]

3. Though they deny it as they will.

I suspect many people voted for Reagan and deny it now.

[Skittles]

6. I can honestly say I did not vote for Reagan

I saw through that smarmy bastard from day one

[bklyncowgirl]

16. I did not but I feel guilty nonetheless to this day. I voted for Barry Commoner--not Carter.

From that day forward I have not voted 3rd party for president no matter how much I dislike the Democratic candidate.

[valerief]

4. I thought he was horrid back then. My feelings haven't changed. I couldn't

understand what there was about him that appealed to people. He was goofy and didn't talk about anything that would help most people.

I didn't realize until I got older how mean and stupid people were. They were ones who voted for Raygun.

[mnhtnbb]

7. There was a sad story in our local paper Sunday

about a 79 year old woman who drives the country in her old RV chasing part time jobs in order to live.

Westfall hadn’t planned to keep working. But in 2008, as the U.S. economy spasmed, she lost her home and tumbled out of the middle class.

Today, Westfall is one of America’s graying nomads. Although many middle-class retirees ply the interstates in Winnebagos as a lifestyle choice, for Westfall and many others, life on the move is not as much a choice as a necessity.

Her seven-year journey has taken Westfall to 33 states and counting. She’s worked as a cavern tour guide, resort receptionist, crowd control officer, hustling clerk at an Amazon warehouse. Others like her have cleaned toilets, picked beets, plucked chickens.

Her monthly income consists of $1,200 in Social Security and a $190 pension, plus pay from her seasonal jobs. She owes $50,000 on her credit cards. There’s also a $268 monthly loan payment for her aging rig.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article58888258.html

[Hortensis]

8. They're still promising to shred the safety net.

Low wages + no safety net = moral, hardworking populace. Or something like that. They have a very unrealistically romantic and totally unjustified conception of the effects of poverty on morality: it will cause deserving people to work hard and prosper, and the undeserving will not.

Being extremely wrong in some ways, to the point of immorality and even of depraved indifference to the welfare of others, doesn't mean that their viewpoint has no validity at all, however.

Let's not forget the contribution of inadequate personal savings to our conundrum. Household savings rates were extremely low before 2008, even dipping into negative numbers nationally. Part of that, of course, was due to effective drops in income, but before and after that happened many people doing well were just blowing all their disposable income instead of saving. And of those who did, most didn't save as much as they could or should for the future, again with vast amounts of income tossed away in extravagant "consumption."

My husband and I are in that group. Fortunately, we have not had to sell our home to pay medical bills our insurance did not cover. Uncovered medical expenses break many people, causing them to lose everything they did save, and often their homes.

Today many tens of millions of people, who quickly ran through their savings before and after retirement and are living on only what their contributions to Social Security secured for them, are now impoverished -- just not destitute to the point of living on the street -- and require additional social assistance. With millions more coming.

For better, and not worse, the 2008 crash has caused people to save more. Those who can while earning often only half what they used to, of course.

[awoke_in_2003]

11. Hard to save money

when you live paycheck to paycheck, because the rate of inflation (the real one, not the fantasy number the government advertises) far out strips wage increases.

[Hortensis]

14. Yup. And for most, what increases.

More than one generation's accumulated wealth or needed future accumulation is being devastated.

[raouldukelives]

9. Wall St and its acolytes have sucked us all dry.

The only ones who have benefited are those invested in the mega-corps that drained us all. That used all the wealth they had, and the will and heart of each individual invested in them, to wreak havoc on our least, on our public goods and on our commons.

But, innovation is hard work. Much easier to be a Gordon Gecko.

Reagan ushered in a new generation of coddled and privileged MBA's who always knew how special and unique they were. How successful and wealthy they would one day be. Many of them gleefully appointed to positions of authority by their friends and families who have themselves always been owed the world and all its wealth.

But the landscape was already littered with profitable companies, factories, hospitals and small banks that had already determined the best way to build a good company with a good name was to provide a good service. Which they did admirably over the decades to become what they were.

The only way to profit by working for these firms was by making a better product or by providing a better service. These things require intelligence, dedication and time. Something Gods special little angels had never learned about nor learned to respect.

They were due the world, wealth and all the time to enjoy it. The only way to accomplish this was by dismantling all the good works of their forefathers, by raiding the profitable companies, in many ways lynchpins of entire communities, and using deceit, dismantling and destruction to profit madly themselves in the short term while turning our country into a third world wasteland of low taxes on robber barons and harsh fines and prison sentences on our most vulnerable to continue funding more and more draconian municipalities.

There are those who find these people and changes disgusting and there are those who work for and emulate them.

It is only through the efforts and donations of so many shareholders that so much destruction has been wrought to so many in such a short time.

If it wasn't literally turning our world into hell. If it wasn't a spit in the face to everyone who ever fought and died for democracy. It'd almost be impressive.

[annabanana]

12. big honkin' kick because all these young whippersnappers

should know this history!

[librechik]

13. it's horrifying that all the years and deaths and imprisonments it took to get labor a say

over our own destinies--now has to be done all over again to loosen the Reagan Revolution's grip on the country.

Vomitous.

[OldHippieChick]

15. I have been a Democrat all of my adult life. I am proud to say

I voted for Jimmy Carter to have a second term. Reagan was the Trump of that time. He hurt us all terribly as Thom Hartman constantly reminds us. Nevertheless, I do not blame Reagan for my poor decisions and lack of retirement wealth. I will be moving to a more hospitable state where real estate prices are reasonable and I can afford to live w/out having to continue to work until I die. I can actually survive on SS and the little savings I have. But Reagan gutted unions and made it pretty impossible for me to get a raise in the last decade. I know where the money has gone and it has not gone into my retirement account.

[Dont call me Shirley]

17. All I can remember Reagan constantly exploding was "Deregulation Deregulation"

Undo the Reagan "Revolution"