Forced Savings, My Ass

Here is a comment I left at this site, in response to remarks by stereotypical Republicans about why people should be allowed to have their own savings/investments rather than the government "forcing" them to put aside $ for retirement.

A comment was made earlier regarding Social Security and a person's right/need/whatever to have their own savings/investment accounts. Well the problem for the majority of Americans, when they retire, is that they will have no savings/investments. I know this is a hard concept for Republicans to fathom since poor Republicans don't actually exist. But a large portion of our working class makes barely enough take-home pay to meet basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. In fact, this portion has been increasing rapidly since 2000 due to cutbacks in federally-subsidized social programs necessitated by tax cuts to the rich with the consequental reduction in tax revenues, and the increased costs of the military and the pre-emptive invasion of a relatively defenseless nation, among other things. Anyway, since so many Americans are unable to save due to lack of disposable income, the Social Security safety net is the only guaranteed source of livelihood for the elderly. After 4 years we sane people realize that virtually anything that Bush wants to fix is going to end up in far worse shape than if he just left it alone. If you need proof, we have those newly-failing causes known as: Iraq, the U.S. economy, the environment, education, civil rights and liberties, foreign relations, nuclear proliferation, national security and homelessness, to name just a few. Now, if we can just get Bush and his neocon cronies to keep their greedy hands out of the Social Security till, maybe we can at least save one of our socially-advanced and successful institutions.