Alameda Study Shows Homeless Are Previously Working Seniors

[daredtowork]

8. This is where the elderly didn't use their political power

The AARP has not aligned itself strongly enough on the side of people in poverty in general - preferring to focus on how they "earned" Social Security. Thus many people on Social Security, even though they benefit from entitlement programs like Medicare, end up joining the Tea Party and screeching against anything that's needs-tested. No one ever "deserves" help in their estimation. Everybody who is poor is "other" in an economy of scarcity.

There are many Seniors who didn't work in the formal economy, who unemployed a lot, who became disabled, or who for some other reason did not earn many Social Security credits. I know someone who was gay and who traveled with his husband (who had the full time job) for years and often did ad hoc work. He ended up with the minimum in Social Security. When you get the minimum, you usually are able to be declared disabled on the basis of the chronic conditions of the elderly, and SSI can make up the rest - that gets it up to the $900. So many Seniors ARE living on a needs-tested program all-ready!!!!! It just doesn't sink in that this is what it is. They figure they just get it by virtue of being elderly: i.e. they "deserve" it.

If the AARP is going to continue to only take it's stand on the fact that they are earnings based, they are going to have to also represent an increase in taxes, because "earned" Social Security isn't paying enough to live on in old age. But if they were honest about Medicare being an entitlement -that some entitlements should perhaps be reframed as investments or just the right thing to do - they would take a stronger stand on behalf of the disabled and needs-based programs as well.