The old days:
In the old days people used to be able to plan to retire in a location like this. Remove a few trees, grade and lay down a short lane of gravel leading to a county road, and build a modest home, or live in a less expensive city from which you could reach the kids and grandkids homes easily, but not too close to major employments centers with the crowding and the noise and fumes. Or maybe you'd stay in the big city and take up a sport or hobby that would help extend your life, and or otherwise keep you active and meeting people.
These kinds of things were normal.
Now:
Now they are only for the select few. There are many reasons for that, most of which are completely different than the reasons that mainstream "explainers" from the news system to politicians both of which are dependent on money from the wealthiest people, tell us. The theft and destruction of our retirement moneys, was and is a grand theft by the wealthy and powerful from the middle and working classes as well as the poor and sick or elderly.
We once had a three legged stool set up for retirement. Saving accounts that paid a decent interest, maybe 5-7% over inflation, pension funds from our jobs because it was considered a basic human right that if you employed a person for 20 or 30 years you owed them a retirement, and Social Security, which the GOP has called an "entitlement" for enough decades that everyone now calls it the same, some with a sneer on their lips as if we are spoiled children of fat cats who intend to feed off the prosperous carcasses of our dead parents or at least their trust funds. In fact, though, we have run the numbers and shown that you earn your Social Security and pay a painful portion of your paycheck every year for it. Two of those legs, savings with reasonable returns and pensions, have been damaged or completely disappeared for most Americans leaving those who still have pension plans in place at risk of having them suddenly disappear. IRAs get stolen from with ever increasing fees, and lowering interest rates, Savings account are earning less than a percent per year for most people, though interest on many unsecured loans are often over 30% a year. And many employers have dropped pensions completely by contract renegotiation, bankruptcy which a GOP packed SCOTUS decided could disappear pension funds, or just ornery assholeness by bosses that are as bad in heart as those who created the horrific work conditions of the 19th century when they were called Robber Barons.
If you have an employer, they do pay half of your Social Security savings, but have always maintained that if they didn't have to pay they would immediately raise wages to compensate. Most knowledgeable sources believe that to be a phony gambit. What the wealthy want is for the Social Security lock box to be broken so they can get their hands on it or at least to reduce your return, but as we showed in the linked article above, you do earn the entire amount via your direct payments to Social Security and your employers' payments if given just a modest but reasonable interest enough for you to be paid out for 40 years after 40 years of employment (at an average of the wages you were paid over that career).
Now you can go now and write your US House Representative and your two Senators and tell them you will not accept a vote from them to delay Social Security or even Medicare which would be easily fixed by negotiating drug prices, for years or reduce benefits and that you will be learning how they voted (we will post the votes here) and you won't believe the lies they tell you about why they "had to do that".
Also tell your Republican representative that you also know that he or she and his or her partners Gerrymandered the GOP to power in the US House of Representatives and you won't stand for that.
That will be overturned so they cannot count on stealing your political rights to give your retirement and Medicare money to fat cats and stay in power. Things are going to happen FOR THE PEOPLE from now on, with or without them in office.
How to Contact Congressionals:
Find your current US House representative at House.gov.
You can select "Contact Your Rep's Name" and then select "Email" from the drop box which will allow you to do just that (involving possibly your complete address including 4 digit zipcode extension (findable via link below) or you can select "Office Information" from the chart for DC and local office addresses, phone, fax, and hours.
Apparently the government site wants to act as your email service, but I doubt they will allow you to contact more than one Representative and two related Senators. I'm going to go try it as soon as I finish here.
And your Senators names and emails can be found at Senate.gov
Ditto on the controls.
Those two above will require a zip-code possibly with the 4 number extension which can be found at USPS.com by going to "Look up a zip-code" and clicking, upon which a small secondary window will open asking for at least a partial address, usually at least the street and any postal box number and city or 5 figure zip code . It will also ask for an email address. I've never tried it but understand the Republicans do write to multiple sets of Congressionals each even if that isn't really nice, I guess from multiple email boxes that have been passed out like popcorn for the last couple of decades. I've never been a spammer, but I'm told that the right passes around email addresses of Congressionals like a lifeguard slathers on suncream for use by their "nickel a tweet or email" squads paid from funds set up by very wealthy individuals. This might be focused mostly on representatives of the same swing states that determine presidential candidates as the most common turnovers of House seats also occur in those areas.
This site Contacting the Congress will deliver to you personally the emails for your Congressman or woman and Senators along with their DC phone and DC fax numbers which, I assume, you can use via any email account or phone, fax. I suppose those are current. If your Congressman has changed for 2013, this is still valid right now because there will be votes on the so-called fiscal cliff this week. --(It is not a cliff, but is being hyped by our fat cat financed news system so that the GOP can take your money and give it to their fat cat donors, to be returned to as over priced ad purchases or for the Congressionals' campaign funds and SuperPAC ads to re-elect them, increasing their own personal power and wealth while you face a retirement without the money you actually put into it and a reasonable return.
If the challenge goes into the new Congress next year, we will try to figure this out again and make sure your new Congressionals, if not the same are available to you. There are forces that, not only attempt to keep information from you, but to keep your ideas from your Congressionals. We will try to help.
But contact your Representative and Senators today. They may make their decision tonight or tomorrow. Do not wait a minute. Tell them to not touch Social Security funds or age or the Medicare age. You will be keeping track!
The Obama administration has a bill pending to keep any immediate pain by regular Americans from being felt by going over the fiscal "cliff". That is another thing being squashed by the Gerrymandered US House. Tell your Congressmembers that you are aware the Republicans are the main problem and that you will be watching to see if they personally join in opposing action to solve the matter in an equitable manner.
A good short URL for this post is http://x.co/qvVW
Picture above of slope and frozen creek in California's "Gold Country" used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user "El Caganer" who has no connection to this blog or blogger.
