I’m not the only one
I don't know that I have been articulating my feelings about Social Security well enough. I recently read a piece from The Washington Post that put the main issue for me into stark relief.
This is a new order with new givens. Paugh and his co-workers came of age as Democrats who felt protected by their union, their party and their government. His grandchildren are all registered Republicans who feel largely on their own in a world full of risks and responsibilities, and no guarantees. They are willing to give Bush's Ownership Society a try, saying they have no hope that government or employers can or will protect them.
My generation does not live in a world where employers actually take care of their employees. Nowadays employees are merely resources to be consumed like any other resource. We live in a world of acquistions and mergers where the outcome almost never benefits anyone but the "ruling class," the overpaid corporate executives. Even if an employee isn't "downsized" outright, benfits rarely improve, and are often cut back as companies keep a sharp eye on the bottom line. Pensions have gone the way of the dinosaur. A few companies still offer them, but who really stays at a job for 25 years anymore? Even assuming some would want to stay that long, how many times of we heard of someone being laid off right before retirement and losing their pension?
Dan's wife, Joyce, took the same hit in 2001 when her job at Lockheed Martin was eliminated after 21 years. She has since found work at a machine shop, but without a comfortable pension, she said, "It feels like I'll have to work till I die."
Unlike many people my age, I went to a work for a company right out college and stayed there for 9.5 years. It is likely that I would be there still, except that we were acquired by another company who eventually ran the business into the ground and ended up letting all the orginal employees of the company go to cut costs. Three times in that 9.5 years I watched theoretical nest eggs evaporate. The first time was during the first acquisition when my stock that I owned in the company was bought out and then taxed as income instead of capitial gains, meaning Uncle Sam, who is supposedly my ally, helped himself to over half of it. Twice I watched a few thousand worth of stock options become worthless over night because the strike price was higher than their current street value, and—thanks to another buyout the first time and getting laid off the second time—I was given 90 days to excercise them or lose them. So I would have actually had to pay my company for my "compensation package."
In this world of Enron, World Com and Untied Arilines is it any surprise that many people of my generation will not trust their retirement to anyone's good faith? Is it any surprise that I do not believe anyone on Capitol Hill has my interests at heart? The wealthy men on Captiol Hill cover their own asses, free to give themselves a raise whenever it suits them and give themselves pensions and lifetime benefits for as little as 2 years of service. When it comes to helping out the poor, do they take money out of their own pockets? Hardly, they take it out of mine. If there is anything my generation has learned it is that no one is watching out for their finacial well being. If they don't do it themselves, no one will.
On a recent day, when Pamela's 11-year-old Ford Probe broke down, Junior Paugh made the hour-long drive to pick her up and take her to work. A starker contrast in two people's relationship to their government and employers would be hard to conjure.
Here was Junior Paugh at the wheel of his silver Buick LeSabre, having moved out of poverty, into the middle class, and now a secure retirement, with the help of one employer and his government. And here, only two generations behind him, sat Pamela Cody, feeling abandoned by everything her grandfather valued.