David Brooks Compares Raising Social Security Retirement Age to Having Wisdom Tooth Removed

[Amerigo Vespucci]

David Brooks Compares Raising Social Security Retirement Age to Having Wisdom Tooth Removed

November 21, 2010 04:00 AM

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/david-brooks-compares-raising-social-secur

By Heather

Ah yes, nothing like some good old inside the beltway Villager wisdom from the likes of the PBS Newshour's Mark Shields and David Brooks. Mark Shields thinks that the Democrats should commit political suicide by making cuts to Social Security because the public will buy into his nonsense that if they do it, it will be less painful than anything the Republicans might do later.

And David Brooks thinks that despite the polls out there saying that Americans do not want entitlements cut, the "reasonable" people will see the wisdom of taking their medicine and accepting our politicians wanting to balance the budget off of the backs of the elderly, the middle class and the poor rather than ask the rich to pay their fair share in taxes. Then Brooks goes on to compare raising the retirement age to him having a wisdom tooth removed.

Yeah, that's just the same thing. I would like for David Brooks to spend a few years in the shoes of any Americans who work physically demanding jobs for their whole lives and then come back and make that same statement. It's easy for someone like him who is an over paid to carry water for Republican policies day in and day out sitting behind a keyboard to think that working until you're almost seventy before you can draw retirement benefits is some reasonable solution to keeping Social Security fully solvent past 2037. For the rest of us that might actually have to work for a living in sometimes harsh conditions, it's snake oil.

[WinkyDink]

1. If having money taken away is as minor as a dental procedure, why are the super-wealthy squealing so

loudly at the prospect?

[laughingliberal]

2. Good point. Why is this meme not as appropriate when talking about taxing the rich? nt

[ananda]

3. Because the havelesses and havenots don't really need money?

:tinfoilhat:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Quite right. Like a having a wisdom tooth removed....with a chain saw.

[burnsei sensei]

5. People don't just get used to hunger,

thirst, cold, exposure, malnutrition, or pain.
People don't just get used to disease, injury, or age.
Old Age makes all people vulnerable in ways they never have been.
And Old Age begins at 60.
For the disabled or weaker people-- it begins earlier.
Choke on your righteous vomit, Mr. Brooks.

[LongTomH]

6. It's not just people with physically demanding jobs!

Anyone over 50 is finding it more and more difficult to stay employed and damn near impossible to find a job if they're unemployed! During the campaign, I spent an evening phone-banking with a group of older people, most of them women. All of the people I talked to were unemployed, all older and with health problems.

And these ladies were ex-professionals! One own had an electrical engineering degree and decades of experience. All she could find was occasional work as a substitute teacher.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. When I look up "schmuck" in the dictionary..there it is: David Brooks' picture!!!