Читать книгу This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save Working People - Elizabeth Warren - Страница 14

When she was younger, Gina worked hard to build that foundation. As she’s aged, however, it has all but crumbled. She is fifty now, and when she thinks about retirement, she seems to be at a loss. “In a perfect world, I can retire to Key Largo,” she says, and then she gives her throaty laugh. But in her real world? “You know what? I don’t really know.” She notes that climbing up and down ladders and carrying loads of shingles is taking a toll on Darren. He is really feeling his arthritis. “He said he’ll probably die outside,” she tells me, trying not to sound too downbeat. Mostly, she tries not to think about the future too much. “Just hope for the best,” she says.

The economic punches that have hit America’s middle class have reverberated through their retirement years. Once again, the numbers that lurk just underneath the overall good news about the economy tell a grim story:

 Bankruptcy filings for people sixty-five and over have increased almost fourfold since 1991.

 For fifteen million seniors, Social Security is all that stands between them and poverty.

 Among seniors who live in nursing homes, 62 percent don’t have enough money to cover the cost of their care.

 Nearly half of all families don’t have a single dollar put away in a retirement account.

Part of the economic problem starts with good news: people are living longer. The fastest-growing age group in America is known as the “old-old,” the term coined to describe people eighty-five and up. The next-fastest-growing group includes those aged seventy-five to eighty-four, and the one after that is for those sixty-five to seventy-four. Yes, there’s a pattern here.

That’s heartening for everyone who is facing old age and for everyone who loves to have a grandma or grandpa around to buy ice cream and admire every crayon drawing the kids produce. But it also means that retirement now costs more than it used to, a whole lot more. People retiring today at sixty-five need enough money to sustain them for an average of twenty more years. That’s about four years longer than they needed in 1970.

Retirees also need to worry about the rising expenses of those final years, particularly for health care and nursing homes. Today, the average cost of a semiprivate room in a nursing home is more than $82,000 a year, and the costs just keep going up.

Rising costs: sound familiar? In fact, many of the problems facing those who are approaching their later years are a lot like the problems facing other working families. But for older people, the punches land just as they are ending their working years and heading into retirement.

It starts with savings. Once again, the top-line number looks great: Americans have saved a total of $25 trillion for retirement. Wow! Let’s order a double round of desserts from the Denny’s senior special!

Not so fast. “Retirement savings” includes a lot of fancy investments that are held by folks at the tippy top of the income scale. A handful of CEOs and superstars have socked away large fortunes, but for most workers, the numbers are still surprisingly grim. The median worker—the person right in the middle of all those who have retirement accounts—has only $18,433 tucked away. And they are the lucky ones. About half of families have nothing saved. Zero. Zip. Hmm: maybe we should change that celebratory dessert to one small dish of ice cream with two spoons?

And what about those employer plans? By the 1960s, about half of all private sector workers had retirement plans that guaranteed benefits for life. Today that number is down to about 13 percent. As corporate executives figured out that they could boost profits (and their own compensation packages) by squeezing rank-and-file workers, generous retirement plans were put on the chopping block. With every passing year, those employer plans look more like an endangered species headed for extinction.

But Social Security can make up the difference, right? Wrong. Social Security has one wonderful feature: no one ever stops receiving money. The monthly check came regularly even for the lady in Worcester, Massachusetts, who, at 113, was the oldest living American. Social Security also has one really lousy feature: it’s not much money to live on. On average, recipients get less than $16,200 a year.

It’s tough out there for seniors, and since the economy is going gangbusters, why not give them a little raise? After all, cost of living increases for those on Social Security have been tiny—or nonexistent—in recent years. In 2015, CEOs got a 3.9 percent raise—and seniors living on Social Security got bupkis. Hoping to correct that obvious mistake, I recently proposed a bill to stitch up the tax loophole that lets corporations take a tax deduction whenever they give an executive a bonus over a million dollars, with the idea that we could use the same money to give seniors (and veterans and people with disabilities) a one-time 3.9 percent raise. Corporations could still dispense those bonuses; they just wouldn’t be getting tax subsidies from everyone else. Made sense to me.

But—no surprise—the Republicans wouldn’t let the bill get anywhere. And also no surprise: I was beyond frustrated. I wanted to call every one of those naysayers and yell, “You try paying rent, utilities, grocery bills, car expenses, insurance, and health-care copays on $1,348 a month—then come back in here and vote.”

Gina tries not to get too anxious about her own future, but she often worries about her coworkers. Once, she talked about Hank, the produce manager at the Walmart where she works. Hank is sixty-five, but he can’t even think about retirement. In fact, he worries about losing this job and wonders where he could earn another paycheck. Gina paused. Hank’s not alone—his mother works at the Dollar Tree forty-five minutes away. “She’s eighty-seven years old,” Gina said. “She had her knees replaced so she can keep working. She has to work.”

Good grief! I’m glad that Hank’s mom is still able to get up and go to work at eighty-seven. But is that America’s retirement plan: work until you drop dead? Can we really call this progress?

One in five Americans is still working after age sixty-five, but that’s a short-term solution at best. And for people who physically can’t perform their jobs anymore—construction workers who have been beat up by the job, nurses who have spent years holding up tottering patients or rolling them over in bed, teachers who have picked up children all day long in preschool, kitchen workers who are on their feet all day and carrying heavy loads—it’s often a real struggle to keep working until sixty-five, much less beyond. Darren’s arthritis is starting to cripple his hands, and he often needs a boost to get out of a chair—and he’s only in his fifties. Even so, he is still out there day after day, bidding for jobs and trying to pull in enough money so the family doesn’t have to hit the food pantry early. No wonder Gina can’t explain their retirement plan. It’s the same as Hank’s mom’s plan: work till you drop.

For someone who has a home that is fully paid for, Social Security might be enough to cover their other expenses. But an increasing number of Americans are entering their retirement years still shouldering a heavy mortgage. Today nearly one in three homeowners sixty-five or older is still carrying a mortgage—and the amount of mortgage debt has jumped 82 percent in just a decade. Rent is getting higher too, and finding housing that is accessible for older adults is a tough challenge in most communities.

More mortgages and bigger mortgages are weighing down a lot of seniors, but for many of them, selling the family home isn’t a good option. An estimated 3.5 million people fifty or older owe more than their homes are worth.

So how are they making it? Even though they are employing lots of strategies to save money, millions of seniors are slipping into debt. They cover basic expenses by using credit cards, and in many cases they won’t be able to pay off that debt. For more and more seniors who find themselves in a downward spiral, bankruptcy is the only answer.

The story of today’s seniors—the need to work longer, the mounting debts, the slide into bankruptcy—is mostly a bleak continuation of the bigger story of what has happened to America’s working families over the last generation. The squeeze caused by flat wages and rising expenses, the relentless chipping away at steady hours and predictable schedules, and the risks of trying to make it in an increasingly uncertain world take their toll. These problems translate into less savings and higher debts that pile up over time. And as challenging as these problems can be during the working years, they land a crushing blow at retirement.

People work hard for most of their lives, and they hope to retire with some dignity. For the majority, this means living independently; they aim to have enough money to cover their expenses without having to rely on their children. But for millions of Americans, that dream of independence is dropping away.

At eighty-seven, Hank’s mom doesn’t want to make it harder for Hank, so five days a week she gets up, takes her medicines, pulls on her clothes, fills her thermos with coffee, and leaves home in time to punch the clock at Dollar Tree. Her plan is to keep pushing herself out the door at eighty-eight. And eighty-nine. And ninety. And forever.