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Monday, January 24, 2005

The Republican Social Security Dead Pool
Posted by Jill | 11:54 AM

Republicans sure like betting on death, don't they?

Remember when John Poindexter was setting up a terrorism futures market so people could do just that -- bet on terrorist attacks and assassinations?

Now they want to use race and sex as criteria in determining Social Security benefits, in essence bet on demographics:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you something else you said at the National Journal Forum that raised some eyebrows: "Women are living longer relative to men today than they were in 1940. Yet, we never ever have debated gender-adjusting Social Security. ...But, at some point if the age difference continues to separate and more women are in the workforce and you have more of an equality of pay structure in the workforce, at some point somebody might want to suggest that we need to take a look at the question of whether or not actuarially we ought to adjust who gets what, when, and how."

A gender adjustment--what does that mean?

REP. THOMAS: Well, it was one of my ways of getting people to focus on the issue of age. To move from 65 to 68, which we did in 1983, was a benefit cut. But it also creates hardships based upon the occupation that you have, and it creates inequities on who you are and how long you live. You could just as easily have a discussion about occupations as to when would be a fair or an unfair time to require. We also need to examine, frankly, Tim, the question of race in terms of how many years of retirement do you get based upon your race? And you ought not to just leave gender off the table because that would be a factor.

MR. RUSSERT: So if someone is a woman and they live longer, they would get less per year?

REP. THOMAS: It's not that you would do it; it's something that you need to look at. Because if you extend the age beyond 78, if you go to 80 or 82, all of those concerns about race, occupation and gender are exacerbated.


Isn't it funny how no one's talking about penalizing white males who live to past 80? It's only about women. Well, you could just kill off all the women when they hit menopause and then we'd never have to pay them a nickel. Since we can't produce cannon fodder any longer, why have us taking up space?
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