Ohio Retirees Oppose Social Security Private Accounts or Reduction in Congressional Support

For Immediate Release
October 23, 2008
Contact: Norm Wernet (614) 271- 4975
nwernet@retiredamericans.org

Ohio Retirees Oppose Social Security Private Accounts or Reduction in Congressional Support

The following is a statement released today by Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans President David Friesner and State Director Norman Wernet

Social Security and Ohio Retirees

The Alliance for Retired Americans opposes private accounts and the current proposals to privatize the Social Security pension and disability protection system. We are concerned about the discussion being initiated that proposes cuts and means testing in Social Security and its various programs. On principle these proposals are aimed at breaking apart one of the few economic mechanisms of social cohesion and stability in our country.

Social Security has been successful as a floor for working men and women and their families. We agree with the real need to increase personal savings for retirement but private Social Security accounts are not the way. We believe that defined benefit pensions would be a more efficient means to accomplish savings for retirement through aggregate investing and would provide more stability for the financial markets.

For the average person in Ohio, Social Security it means a stable income of around $ 12,000 a year, not a lot and certainly below the recent self- sufficiency standard established by the Ohio Community Action agencies studies earlier this year. Here in Franklin County that is $17,652 for a single adult. The self- sufficiency income need to survive in for one adult is $16,112 in Stark Co or $18097 in Summit Co, $14,647 in Belmont Co, $15,861 in Hardin Co, and $16,232 in Preble Co.

Ohio Institute for Women’s Policy Research found the median income for women over 65 to be below $12,500. A reduction or cut in the cost of living adjustment in Social Security would quickly place Ohio’s older women further at risk. Men over 65, by the way are not much better off with median income of below $21,500. The median income for a household over 65 is just under $25,000 according to census figures.

Freezing the Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment as part of a deficit reduction strategy would have profound effects on our communities. This year’s Social Security COLA of $2.7 million dollars per month may not boost the economy of Trumbull County but its withdrawal would certainly hurt.

What one of us can save enough money to protect our families if a spouse dies during our working years? Some of us have experienced this personally. Social Security was there for our family to help a spouse into the workforce and provide an education for orphaned children. Have any of us saved enough to counter the effect of a work life ending disability?

The threat to our Social Insurance is that division and segmentation breeds more desire for division and segmentation. Those that have wealth resent paying for those that have less and those who have less resent paying for those locked out of the economy. We see that at work every day and are hearing it constantly on talk radio. The corrosion of societal cohesion is what Social Security worked to resolve in the depths of an economic depression and brought us into prosperity and life after a life of work.

Social Security has worked as one part of a mechanism to hold society together and bridge those divides. It is a means of knitting generations together and creating a vision of the abundance we have and the ways to share it. Certainly it is better to share that abundance through meaningful and productive work. But our market system has not been producing very well for most of us these days. Social Security is one stable factor.

Those of us who are retired from the active workforce are not a disposable commodity, We are the generation that created the idea of productivity and did it. We became the most productive workforce in the world and transformed the idea of the modern city and suburb into a reality. We created the great American consumer economy. We want to continue to live into that reality as long as possible, spending our incomes where we live.

Placing us all at the risk of the market place does not seem a wise or prudent thing to do.