Let's review for a moment. The White House and Senate are negotiation to keep the wealthiest of Americans happy, and potentially increase taxes for lower income people, while creating a Social Security timebomb with the "temporary" payroll tax holiday (since when was "temporary tax cuts" in Republicans' vocabulary?).
Against that backdrop, a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis sounds a huge warning bell for America's seniors, current and future.
Nearly half of all Americans between the ages of 60 and 90 will encounter at least one year of poverty or near poverty, says a recent study by Mark R. Rank, PhD, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Work at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis....
Rank found that although 32.7 percent of white older Americans will experience at least one year below the official poverty line, the corresponding percentage for black older Americans was double that at 64.6 percent.
In addition, for unmarried older Americans, the percentage experiencing poverty was 51.2 percent compared with 24.9 percent for married older Americans. Likewise, for those with fewer than 12 years of education, the percentage experiencing poverty was 48.4 percent compared with 20.5 percent for those with 12 or more years of education....
The study also looks at the likelihood of asset poverty and elderly Americans.
“Fifty-eight percent of those between the ages of 60 and 84 will at some point fail to have enough liquid assets to allow them to weather an unanticipated expense or downturn in income,” he says.
Rank's solution for lawmakers: "policies that encourage greater levels of savings among the working-age population, facilitating cooperative living arrangements among the elderly, establishing fair terms with respect to reverse mortgage programs, and strengthening the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income programs."
Those are pretty good solutions, particularly that last one. It could be achieved pretty simply, too, by raising or eliminating the payroll tax cap. But if a chunk of payroll taxes go on permanent holiday, that solution will be out the window.