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The GAO has concluded that squeezing a few years more work out of the elderly and infirm to pay for hedge fund managers' yachts may be counterproductive.
WASHINGTON – Raising the retirement age for Social Security would disproportionately hurt low-income workers and minorities, and increase disability claims by older people unable to work, government auditors told Congress.
The projected spike in disability claims could harm Social Security's finances because disability benefits typically are higher than early retirement payments, the Government Accountability Office concluded.
So while the thought of a few million people working themselves to death in pain or chronic exhaustion may have warmed the hearts of tender-hearted billionaires like Pete Peterson or pickled blowhards like Alan Simpson...well, it just doesn't make financial sense, after all.
About one-fourth of workers age 60 and 61 — just under the early retirement age — reported a health condition that limited their ability to work. Among those older workers, blacks and Hispanics were much more likely to report fair or poor health than whites, according to the report.
Stripped of its financial angle, the gist of the GAO's report is that people would be so beaten down by being forced to work extra years that their disability claims would soar, costing the government even more money. What isn't explicitly mentioned is the human cost: the misery, pain and affliction that these people would be enduring, whether they receive "disability" benefits or not.
Old age is hard enough on people without the added effect of living in excruciating pain until death, just to pad some teenage millionaire's trust fund.
The report stresses that
Less healthy older workers had lower incomes, less accumulated wealth and were much less likely to have attended college.
In other words, the very people likely to fall through the safety net first: poorer demographics, African-Americans and Hispanics, who were so well represented by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
AARP also points out the shocking news that employers exactly aren't beating the bushes to flush out old, weak and sick workers.
Some people just can't continue to work beyond age 62 for either health reasons or they're just not able to find jobs," said David Certner, legislative policy director for AARP. "Just because we tell people they should work longer doesn't mean that there are employers out there willing to hire people."
In a way, it may have been a perverse good fortune that Obama commissioned this trainwreck to come up with its recommendations in the midst of an Economic Depression. Had its proposals been floated in a time of economic prosperity, more people might have given them credence, in the same way Social Security Privatization seemed like a great idea at the height of the tech bubble.
As things stand, though, the GAO report should even provide pause to those Democrats who worship at the holy altar of deficit reduction.