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It has been said that a society is judged on how it treats its elders. In America, our judgment day is fast approaching. Across the country, countless local governments, facing major budget shortfalls, are conspiring to put the pensions of their workers—not the profits of the banks and the corporations—on the chopping block. Our economy is in collapse, and cities, counties, and states have taken on debts—often to criminal Wall Street banks and corporations—to provide public services and meet their pension responsibilities. Yet local governments continue to find themselves in financial hardship because the capitalist system itself is falling apart. We are now seeing the money public workers paid into their pensions stolen from them, given to Wall Street to pay off criminal loans.
Detroit is the first major city to file for bankruptcy since the Great Recession began in 2008, threatening the pensions of its workers yet promising to pay off Wall Street loans. Within two years, Chicago, America’s third largest city, will be unable to meet its obligations to fund its pensions because of an ever-increasing debt—which now stands at nearly $29 billion. Debt is mounting nationwide.
We have a moral obligation to provide for retired workers and all elderly people. When pensions are cut off, yet Wall Street loans are paid off, the corporations are looting the workers.
The financial crisis we are facing is based off of a lie: “there is not enough money.” The “Great Recession” officially ended in June 2009 as profits and stocks rebounded. The rebound was made possible through a major shift of wealth as trillions of federal tax dollars funneled into the financial institutions and corporations. Additionally, the private sector has boosted its profits by streamlining their efficiencies through the use of advanced technology, increasingly exploitative working conditions, and laying off millions of workers permanently.
The truth is: US companies are sitting on about $2 trillion dollars, according to JPMorgan. This is dead money, just sitting there unused. Corporations are reporting their highest profits in history, and the working class is seeing none of it. Never in history has there been this much productivity and wealth with so few workers. This amassing of wealth is the result of increasing production with computers and robots rather than with human labor. And with labor being eliminated, the corporations simply won’t pay for the wellbeing of workers they don’t need. Profits are their only priority.
Despite massive inequality, we are living in an age of plenty. There is no excuse not to provide for our retirees. It is inhumane and criminal to let seniors go without food, housing, and healthcare when there is so much to go around! For more and more people, capitalism simply is no longer able to provide a living, let alone a retirement. The only way retirees, indeed everyone, will have a secure future is to join together and fight for a new society where the people as a whole own the means of producing everything we need to live.
