Ben Shapiro, the smarmy young elitist who co-founded conservative platform The Daily Wire, took a break from fondling the Wailing Wall the other day. Next to enthusiastically shilling for Israel, his key issue seems to be eliminating Social Security. You know, the primary income most retired people rely on.
Shapiro came out with both guns blazing, firing away at….American senior citizens. He called retirement itself a “stupid idea” and said it was “insane” that the retirement age hasn’t been raised. This has long been a Stupid Party staple- just keep raising the retirement age. That way there will be less of the old, useless eaters to pay. Shapiro inaccurately referred to the fact that Americans are living longer, when actually the life expectancy rate in this country has been falling for the past several years. That’s because of our crack Medical Industrial Complex, and our preservative/GMO-riddled food supply. Both of which Shapiro and his ilk undoubtedly think are wonderful.
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Shapiro’s ugly remarks came on the heels of Donald Trumpenstein declaring that “there is a lot you can do” in terms of cutting Social Security and Medicare. Naturally, Trump has repeatedly stated he would never touch them. A Trump spokesperson quickly walked back the comments, explaining, “President Trump delivered on his promise to protect Social Security and Medicare in his first term, and President Trump will continue to strongly protect Social Security and Medicare in his second term.” Yes, the Giant Orange Man didn’t get rid of these crucial programs during his time as president. And, he won’t get rid of them again if he’s re-selected. Honest.
Shapiro comes from the Paul Ryan school of neocon RINOism. This strain of “conservative” worships the author/philosopher Ayn Rand. I had a brief fling with Rand’s work as a young man. Then I started reading some of her morally empty quotes. Like how we have no obligation to help our neighbor. She, too, hated Social Security. But she accepted hers when it came time to collect. That’s the kind of atheist a “Christian” conservative could love. When the Stupid Party elected Ryan as Speaker of the House, they advertised a commitment to this poisonous credo of unholy selfishness. Greed is good. He who dies with the most toys wins. The mantra became we have to “do something” about “entitlements.” This means, of course, eliminating Social Security and Medicare. Which are not “entitlements” in the sense the Rand cult means. But we are all certainly entitled to these benefits.
Actually, benefits isn’t the right word, either. Every employee pays into the Social Security and Medicare funds through FICA payroll taxes. When you collect Social Security and Medicare, it’s your money being paid back to you, very gradually. It’s not a “welfare” style perk that lazy oldsters are unfairly receiving. But to the RINO-led Republicans, Social Security and Medicare- which is simply the incremental payback of forcefully withheld income- are the first priorities for spending cuts. Not foreign aid, including the unfathomable amount we continue to funnel to “democratic’ Ukraine. Zelensky is more important that grandma. How about cutting all those worthless federal agencies? Department of Energy? Department of Education? Homeland Security? FEMA? Maybe if they raid Mar-a-Lago again, the FBI?
In the neocon world, all that stands between the United States and fiscal soundness are those “entitlements” that elderly Americans literally survive on. If you want to reform Social Security, start with all the illegal immigrants who never paid into the system getting money back through fake or stolen Social Security numbers. I went over the scandal of illegals, using their taxpayer identification numbers, exploiting the additional child tax credit loophole to claim $1000 per child, even when they’re living in Mexico, in my book Survival of the Richest. That’s if these children even exist. This fraud was estimated to be costing taxpayers some $4.2 billion annually, as of 2013. And the IRS has known about it for years. They don’t do anything about it, because they’re too busy auditing citizens who hold “extremist” political beliefs.
It’s been confirmed that the beloved Biden administration is giving illegal immigrants $2,200 a month, plus free travel, housing and medical services. No American citizen is getting that deal. And the $2,200 alone is more than many elderly people get in monthly Social Security benefits. So, the Republicucks might want to eliminate that first. Some of our sterling Social Security Administration employees have been caught selling Social Security cards to illegals, which they can use later to collect benefits. If amnesty is granted to millions, which every neocon supports, then it is estimated that would cost an astounding $1.3 trillion to Social Security and Medicare, once they legally go on the rolls. Isn’t cheap labor worth it?
Matt Walsh, who works for Shapiro’s Daily Wire, also tweeted out similarly Ayn Randian comments. Walsh is great on cultural issues, but a typical Republicuck abomination on the economy. He is of the school that young people “don’t want to work,” and that high-paying jobs are out there for the asking. If only they could get these worthless snowflakes away from their smart phones and video game systems. This is contrary to reality; a man in Florida applied for something like fifty entry level jobs a few years ago, and received one call back. The “Help Wanted” signs are for public relations purposes. I hear from people all the time who experience this rigged job market first-hand. They don’t have any vested interest in concocting stories. To those like Walsh, seniors who didn’t “build” substantial investments are just out of luck. Walmart always needs greeters. Like his boss Shapiro says, it’s stupid to retire.
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Social Security certainly isn’t perfect. But it’s entrenched within our society now. You can’t engineer the elimination of private pensions, which is what gradually happened here over the past forty years or so, and then stop giving back retired citizens the money they paid into Social Security over the course of a lifetime. What are the elderly supposed to live on? Sure, those in the top twenty percent- who managed this collapsing mess with high paying jobs- will possess backup resources. And they are likely to have one of the dwindling number of private pensions left. Those pensions are not going to retirees who toiled at menial labor for fifty years. In other words, to those who would need it most. Yeah, I know- Marx said “to each according to his needs” or whatever. Our wealth is distributed in an ass backwards fashion.
So raise the retirement age. Bring back child labor. That way you’ll have more years paid into the system, and will have to wait longer to collect even a small portion of it back. And the Shapiros of the world want to scrap the minimum wage. If we raise it, you’ll be paying $100 for that precious Big Mac! But somehow those $50 million tax free year-end bonuses, and asinine golden umbrellas, don’t impact the cost of your product. The public never has to pay to enable that kind of lunacy. Only if you give the hamburger flippers a few dollars more per hour. It’s a crony capitalism thing, you wouldn’t understand. It’s the same corporate concept whereby a file clerk pocketing a company pen is a thief, but an executive taking a vacation on the company isn’t. The Stupid Party brilliant strategy; raise the retirement age, scrap the minimum wage.
Mainstream Republicans- not the typical MAGA voter- support this monstrously wasteful and unfair system as heartily as the most deranged social justice warrior. They blanched at Trump’s revolutionary 2016 campaign rhetoric. Fortunately for them, it was all scripted for him. He obviously doesn’t believe his own rhetoric. But if Trump, or Shapiro, or any other member of the Stupid Party, is seriously considering cutting Social Security and Medicare, it would be the stupidest of all their many stupid historical moves. Imagine the impact on the economy that the elimination of these benefits would mean. It’s not like the elderly with few other resources (the vast majority of them) could depend on family members for help. Decades of devastating cultural propaganda have created massive family dysfunction.
