What do you DESERVE?

I’ll go to with the basics, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But if you look at the popular rhetoric on social media and from several senior advocacy groups, you will see “we” deserve more, we earned it, we paid our dues. “We” being seniors, the elderly.

I don’t feel that way at all. I don’t want to see more resources diverted to those of us who were fortunate to achieve those age designations, especially at the expense of the younger generation, our children and grandchildren in many cases.

We had to deal with the vicissitudes of life, but so do younger people. We had a lifetime to make decisions, some good, some irresponsible most likely. If we were lower income all our lives, we are unlikely to be better off in retirement.

We had forty years or so to plan for retirement, to anticipate our needs and risks. Is it now fair to say we should not have to pay this tax or another or to expect extra income at the expense of others? 

Why do we deserve a higher SS COLA than the formula determines when the trust is headed toward insolvency? Who will be paying to fix the SS system?  It will be younger working people, not us. 

Don’t misunderstand, I am not arguing against assisting those in need – there is much assistance available including tax relief in different forms, but that is different from a broad “seniors” designation. 

Just getting old is not a new entitlement in my opinion.