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Regard my previous post: Need, yes. Deserve, no! Who “deserves” more?
Here is an e-mail I just received from the Senior Citizens League asking me to sign a petition. This is the broad brush, fiscally irresponsible approach I find misplaced.
“SENIORS DESERVE RELIEF FROM INFLATION”
Note “deserve.”
“Dear Richard,
Inflation continues to erode the value of seniors’ monthly Social Security checks and, for millions of older Americans, there’s no cushion left to absorb the blow.
This year’s modest COLA increase simply hasn’t kept pace with rising costs, while essentials like housing, food, and health care keep getting more expensive. It’s no surprise that more and more seniors worry about whether their retirement savings will last. (In fact the CPI-W includes all those items.)
Congress has a chance to provide meaningful, immediate relief, but only if lawmakers hear from people like you.”
The request is an extra $200 a month SS payment for six months- without consideration for the fiscal state of Social Security or deficit spending in general.
The Senior Citizens League is a garbage organization, well known for aggressive and borderline deceptive fundraising, and ranked by Charity Watch as one of the worst charities in the nation. They spend only 30% of what they raise on actual programs and keep the other 70%, although precise numbers are uncertain because they hide their financial statements and governing documents from public view. They should not be cited as an example of anything.
And I still urge you as I did yesterday to get out and spend time with the poor seniors in your community.
I have no respect for the SCL, but they are vocal and active and often cited in the press.
I have no doubt about the seniors in need. People who were low income during their working years are mostly likely to be no better off or worse in retirement.
Still the median household income for those 65+ is about $57,000 and for single men $37,000 and women $24,600 which is not great.
As I have said, anyone in need should receive the necessary assistance, but that surely is not the majority of seniors.
I’m cynical enough to hold the opinion that no one “deserves” anything.
Seniors, like so many other groups, have become an organized interest group in our political system
Organized interest groups advocate for the particular goals of their group. They fund raise to support their advocacy and use overheated and melodramatic language to solicit funds
The Senior Citizens League, which I have never heard of, is one of those groups. The facts that its solicitation letter uses the word “deserve” and focuses only its members’ parochial goals, but not the long term plight of Social Security and the national debt and the budget deficit are unremarkable.
my reaction to its use of the word “deserve” is so what? If I had received the letter, I would have discarded it, along with my other daily junk mail, probably without even opening it.
The problem is they are looking for readers to sign a petition to use in lobbying Congress which is susceptible to senior voters and with an election coming up any irresponsible action is possible. That’s why this stuff shouldn’t be ignored.
That is a feature, not a bug, in our political system. This, not a problem.
Countless groups send petitions to Congress and raise money. That is how the system works, like it or not.
It’s not the process, it’s the message. I did my share of walking the halls of Congress lobbying, it’s the position being lobbied that’s of concern.