If there’s one thing I cordially detest about social media today, it’s the photo-memeification of all political debate. On Facebook and Twitter, thousands of people can pass along a graphic, often wrong, frequently giggly/snarky photo in lieu of understanding an issue or being able to state a coherent case.
But sometimes they’re right:
I’ve been harping on the workforce participation numbers since 2011 – and they’ve just gotten worse.
And the fact is, if we’re ever going to reduce that debt figure (which doesn’t, by the way, count all the other unfunded entitlements that are floating about in the ether in numbers that look like they should be expressing Zimbabwean currency), it’s going to take actual productivity – which you’re not going to get when a huge percentage of your most-nominally-productive population are sitting idle, having given up hope that the economy will find a place for them.
(“But Mitch”, someone will no doubt say, “the workforce number reflects the number of baby-boomers that are retiring!”. Sure, some of it. But the percentage of Americans over 65 who are at work has actually risen – alone among the age groups – since the recession started. And people drop off the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ figures after 70, so any retiring boomers will be out of the statistical picture momentarily, here…).
People are working past age 65? Not unexpectedly since the minimum age for full benefits from SS has risen as well. I know I have to go to 66.5 to get full benefits. It’s a feature, not a bug. And since, on average, life expectancy has increased as well, there is no reason to not work longer.
Full benefits are at a higher age, but it’s worth noting that partial benefits can be had at age 62 or so, and a lot of people, including some to whom I am related, are taking advantage of this because they can’t get traction in this economy.
In the Obama economy, I’m glad that I like gyros and baklava, because it’s obvious to me that we’re becoming Greece.