All Workers Are Not Equal When it Comes to Extending the Retirement Age
In Washington, federal commissions may be as common as geese flyovers—though a goose, at least, tends to arrive at her destination while a blue-ribbon panel tends to twist in the wind—but that hasn’t stopped people from taking the work of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform quite seriously. The non-establishment left wing is so worried that the commission will focus almost solely on cutting Social Security by extending the retirement age to 70 that it has taken to calling the panel the “cat food commission” (as in, these 18 men and women would gut retirement benefits so much so that seniors will be forced to survive on cans of Friskies).
Leaving aside the hyperbole, no doubt designed to generate at least some interest in another boring D.C. commission, The New York Times ran an article yesterday that pointed out how very serious that change—a dramatic four-year rise in the retirement age—would be to a certain sector of the labor force: those whose work, day in and day out, is primarily physical.
The article focuses in on 58-year-old Ohio resident Jack Hartley, who assembles tires, which sounds like back-breaking work:
Mr. Hartley performs these steps nearly 30 times an hour, or 300 times in a shift. “The pain started about the time I was 50,” he said. “Dessert with lunch is ibuprofen. Your knees start going bad, your lower back, your elbows, your shoulders.” He said he does not think he can last until age 66, when he will be eligible for full Social Security retirement benefits. At 62 or 65, he said, “that’s it.”
It would be one thing if blue collar workers like Hartley were represented on the commission—which must achieve consensus among just 14 of the 18 members for their recommendations to be voted out—but they’re largely not. (Perhaps that’s why raising the retirement age has become a “consensus” position for “fixing” Social Security.) Andy Stern, former head of the Service Employees International Union, is probably the only one on there who truly understands people who scrub, hammer, and lift for a living. The rest are mostly members of the federal policy and legislative elite. They may hoof it for votes during election years and work out at the gym, but they surely don’t have to break a sweat—or risk breaking their backs—to get their jobs done.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that type of work, but it behooves (behoofs?) the people who are going to make these possibly fateful decisions to learn about the full impact on the 8.5 million workers like Hartley. After all, Social Security is hardly in immediate trouble—it’s solvent until nearly 2040 and then it will still be able to pay 80 percent of benefits.
It’s Medicare, the other pink (or in-the-red) entitlement in the room, that needs a whole lot more fixing and a whole lot more attention by this commission.
After all, as someone once said (on the Internet), “Whether a fellow winds up with a nest egg or a goose egg depends a heap on the kind of chick he married.” It may also depend on the kind of commission he formed.