The cat-food commission just couldn't be better timed...

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

"As of 2008, the latest data available, people aged 65 to 74 were spending 12.3% less than they did ten years earlier, in inflation-adjusted terms."

And though the data is unavailable, 2009 was obviously lower than 2008 (for the year)

Weak economy and low yields are threat to retirement
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/08/weak-economy-and-low-yields-are-threat.html

Another Threat to Economy: Boomers Cutting Back
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703321004575427881929070948.html


Essentially, health care and gasoline up everything else down.

[CoffeeCat]

1. People are scared to death...

Many are unemployed, or worried about being the next on the chopping block. Many
have also endured pay cuts or a cut in benefits.

People have been jolted into turning around their behavior. People are trying to
save more and prepare for their own economic disaster.

So people are not spending as much. They're saving and paying off the credit
cards, instead of using them to buy things that they cannot afford.

As for people who are older--who must think about retirement--you can imagine
why they are even more concerned. They're faced with retirement as their
housing values have plummeted and their stock portfolios have been pounded. Being
older means other challenges, should you find yourself unemployed.

It doesn't help matters when the greedy, selfish politicians who want to cut Social
Security--constantly crow about privatization and cuts to the program. This leaves
people in panic mode. Why in the hell would someone want to eat dinner at a restaurant
or buy a new car or pick up a cool vase at Pier One--if they're scared to death of
retiring with very little while politicians make Social Security a political football???

Someone needs to make an example out of those who want to mess with or cut Social Security.
Position them as idiots who are causing our entire economy to contract, due to an entire
class of citizens who are scared to death!

[laughingliberal]

2. Excellent post! nt

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. It has gone largely unnoticed that the Republicans want to privatize SS

and if they get into power that's what they will do along with many other services.

[Sherman A1]

20. Agreed

[jaxx]

3. I wonder where that horrid name, the cat food commission,

came from. It's highly detrimental to the senior citizens of this country.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. No, it is not.

The coined name is highly beneficial to the senior citizens of this country, and senior citizens to be.

It's highly detrimental to the commission.

[jaxx]

8. I disagree.

People have pride and insinuating they eat cat food is reprehensible. Nobody wants to be poor, but rubbing it in their faces....I just don't get it.

[girl gone mad]

12. No one is insinuating that senior citizens eat cat food.

The insinuation is that the commission won't be happy until they force senior citizens into a state of abject poverty.

[Chisox08]

16. It is insinuating that seniors eat cat food

It is insinuating that the commission wants to cut SS so much that it will force people to eat cat food.

[Little Star]

26. Hellooooooooooo

It is the commission that wants seniors to eat cat food. The insult has nothing to do with what seniors eat. It is about what the commission will make people eat. Get it??????????????????

[northernlights]

27. back in the bad ol' days, before social security

and again,before they put COLA into social security, many elderly people were believed to be eating cat food because that's all they could afford. I don't know whether or not that truly happened -- there are healthier, tastier ways to eat cheaply than catfood.

This isn't about rubbing people's faces in their poverty. It's about a group of people who is trying to return those people to abject poverty.

It's a reminder to all what that commission intends to do and is a wake-up call to everybody to stop the commission in its tracks.

[QC]

28. I remember hearing those stories as a child in the 70s. n/t

[Little Star]

25. I agree. The name is detrimental to the commission.

[laughingliberal]

6. It's not nearly as detrimental as some of the proposals we hear floating around.

Some people won't be satisfied until starvation and hypothermia take their rightful places back at the top of the list of causes of death in the elderly.

That said, I liked the name, "Alpo Bailout Task Force."

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

7. The Golden Years Dignity Commission

Dig your own grave and save!

[HowHasItComeToThis]

10. HEY MY REPUB ASSOCIATES, THERE MUST BE A QUICK BUCK TO BE MADE SOMEWHERE HERE.

:toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast:

[girl gone mad]

9. As you have been told before..

it's very clearly a dig at the commissioners, not at senior citizens.

[jaxx]

11. It's a slur.

Period.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

13. And calling the Iraq War a mistake disrespects the troops...

It is an attack on the Commission and on nothing else.

If you simply want to believe it is a slur that's your prerogative.

[laughingliberal]

19. Yep. A slur against the lying, thieving deficit hawks who deserve every minute of it.

Period.

[Hannah Bell]

21. it comes from the pre-70s stories about seniors (who used to be the poorest age segment)

living on cat food.

back when cat food used to be cheap.

[JDPriestly]

22. The term cat-food commission is appropriate.

It is in no way detrimental to senior citizens.

I did not think up the term, but I was told by a grocery store clerk in London, England around 1973 that the very elderly woman who was in front of me in line was buying catfood -- for herself. That is all that the elderly British woman could afford to eat at that time in England due to the very difficult economy.

Social Security is less than $1,200 per month per person on average. Try living on that.

People often point out that Social Security is the only thing that keeps many seniors' living standard above the poverty level. First, the benefits that a good portion of the people on Social Security receive actually leaves them with less than a poverty level of income. Second, the average recipient getting about $1,200 per month is just barely above the poverty level.

Those seniors who own their homes outright and only have to pay property taxes and insurance may survive on that. But if your mortgage or rent is $1,000 per month and you are on Social Security, you are in trouble. It is very difficult to get even a small apartment for less than $1,000 per month in relatively safe areas of Los Angeles. So, if current Social Security benefits are reduced even slightly through any mechanism, many, many, many seniors would have to live well under the poverty level and more of them would be eating cat food.

Baby Boomers were asked to pay extra into the Social Security Trust Fund and now are being told that there is not enough money to pay them in retirement.

And yes, Google it. There is a Social Security Trust Fund. Much of it is invested in treasury bonds, notes, etc. But it is a separate fund, accounted for separately.

Hope this response is helpful to you. A lot of people are misinformed or do not understand that Social Security is the retirement of last resort ALREADY. If the benefits are reduced, it would be absolutely tragic for millions of elderly Americans.

[daleanime]

14. I surprised that no one has mentioned the obvious....

of course people are cutting back on everything else, look at the way health care and health care insurance are jumping. Do they have any choice?:banghead:

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

15. Actually, it is both

Spending 12.3% less overall

*and*

A higher percentage of that spending on health care.

Double whammy.

[daleanime]

17. I've said it before and I'll say it again....

single payer is the best single of legislation that can be done for this nation. Well except for stopping needless wars. :banghead: Oh, that's right-doing good is not on the agenda.:grr:

[Chisox08]

18. Look at what has jumped

Drugs, the prescription kind not the good kind, gas, health care and health insurance. While food and clothing has dropped. just an observation.

[mikehiggins]

23. cat food commission offensive? are you kidding me?

Nobody says seniors (yeah, I am one) wants to eat catfood instead of real food. What we are saying is the intent of the members of Obama's Cat Food COmmission is to make that more likely to happen, as it has happened in the past (for those who remember the days before Fox News).

What that label does is spell out the stakes here as well financed and well connected wealthy interests try to squeeze the last penny out of those who clearly deserve such treatment, such as those of us who insist on living past the point were it would be convenient for us to die.

Framing the term "cat food commission" as being somehow anti-senior implies that the commission somehow has the best interests of the elderly at heart. Are you kidding me?

[ipaint]

24. The commission is the brain child of billionaire Pete Peterson.

And it's purpose is to get the elite in this country out of paying back their gov. loans of our retirement money they used to finance 30 years of tax cuts and resource wars.

Cat food commission is a perfect description. Obama went along with this billionaire asshole's plan to steal our money and Obama will pay the price politically if any of the conservative idiots he appointed to the commission touch it.

The elite borrowed the fund they can damn well pay it back.


"The first TFT "dispatch" to appear in the Post--"Support grows for tackling nation's debt"--made no mention of Peterson's crusade. But it featured the same devious gimmick the financier has been peddling around Washington. Congress should create a special commission of eighteen senators and representatives empowered to to make the "tough" budget decisions politicians are loathe to face--slashing benefits, raising payroll taxes or both. Other members of Congress would be prohibited from changing any of the particular measures, and would cast only an up-or-down vote on the entire package, no amendments allowed. Supposedly, this would give them political cover. Look, no hands. We just cut Social Security but it wasn't our fault.

This "reform" is profoundly antidemocratic because it would strip ordinary citizens of the only leverage they have in Washington--the ability to lean on their elected representatives and exact retribution if they get sold out. Peterson has two advocates in the Senate--Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire--who are self-righteous fiscal hawks. The TFT story describes the rising federal deficits as a threat to the republic, yet fails to explain why deficits on rising. The billions have been devoted to bailing out major banks and Peterson's old chums in Wall Street or to turning around the failed economy or fighting two wars at once.


...Here is what really worries the fiscal hawks: as the Social Security trust fund built up the huge surpluses, the federal government borrowed the money and spent it. The time is approaching--maybe ten or twelve years from now--when the federal treasury will have to start paying back its debts to Social Security. The accumulated wealth does not belong to the US government, any more than the money it borrowed from China. The beneficial owners are all those working people who faithfully paid their FICA taxes for all those years. If Washington stiffs them now, it will be a bait-and-switch swindle larger than Wall Street's"

http://www.thenation.com/article/looting-social-security-part-2

[laughingliberal]

29. +10,000 nt

[QC]

30. BINGO! n/t

[leftstreet]

32. +1

[PA Democrat]

31. Yes, it looks like health care and gas prices are squeezing out

all other spending.