CSotD: Dickering over the price
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I don't always agree with Ted Rall, who can be awfully heartless in his ideological purity.
This time, however, he's commenting on someone whose ideology is twice as heartless and it sure works for me.
There is something deeply and offensively cynical in the "We won't touch the benefits you've been promised" approach. On the surface, it contains a reasonable element of "because you planned for retirement based on these conditions …"
And that's fair enough, assuming for the moment that you truly believe that the camel wants only a chance to warm the tip of his nose.
But, even assuming that improbable promise, it is very hard indeed not to suspect that the pledge to keep your hands off my Medicare and Social Security is based on the assumption that I share your values system and have no deeper loyalties than my own well-being, and to suspect that the pledge is intended to make me like you.
Oh, the deja vu, the deja lire!
"Won't it make you proud to have your commanding officer promoted to general — to know you served in an outfit that averaged more combat missions per person than any other? Don't you want to earn more unit citations and more oak leaf clusters for your Air Medal? Where's your 'spirit de corps? It's your last chance to answer yes."
"No."
"In that case, you have us over a barrel," said Colonel Korn without rancor. "… and we have to send you home. Just do a few little things for us, and …"
"What sort of thing?" Yossarian interrupted with belligerent misgiving.
"Oh, tiny, insignificant things. Really, this is a very generous deal we're making with you. We will issue orders returning you to the States — really, we will — and all you have to do in return is …"
"What? What must I do?"
Colonel Korn laughed curtly. "Like us."
Yossarian blinked. "Like you?"
"Like us."
"Like you?"
"That's right," said Colonel Korn, nodding, gratified immeasurably by Yossarian's guileless surprise and bewilderment. "Like us. Join us. Be our pal. Say nice things about us here and back in the States. Become one of the boys. Now, that isn't asking too much, is it?"
"You just want me to like you? Is that all?"
"That's all."
"That's all?"
"Just find it in your heart to like us."
Yossarian wanted to laugh confidently when he saw with amazement that Colonel Korn was telling the truth. "That isn't going to be too easy," he sneered.
When I was a young man, I thought "Catch-22" was about war. And every time I read it again, at each successive stage of life, I have realized that it's about everything, and that it is becoming less and less surrealistic and more and more journalistic as the Colonel Cathcarts and Colonel Korns gain ascendancy.
And now, since I'm over 55, all I have to do is to like them, and let them continue to raise the number of combat missions for my children and grandchildren and all the other people I will leave behind, let them risk those lives for their own selfish advancement, and I can be safe.
It's truly an insulting offer.
Here's my counter-proposal, Colonel Romney and Colonel Ryan:
It's not just that those of us nearing retirement have been counting on Social Security and Medicare. It's that the entire economic system has been predicated on those factors. So fix that as part of your plan to "reform" Social Security and Medicare.
First, since most companies abandoned pensions with the promise that they would match 401k contributions, and then abandoned those matches, let's have across-the-board raises that will replace all those missing contributions to retirement savings.
And that should also include a raise in the minimum wage so that companies can no longer bank on welfare filling in the gaps, or force their workers to hold down two all-but-full-time jobs.
And, speaking of those all-but-full-time jobs, the ones that send you home each week just barely in time to stop you short of qualifying for the company's inadequate health plan and other benefits, let's just do away with health benefits by a rock-solid pledge to expand the Affordable Health Care Act and make it truly universal.
And, since the companies will save all that money on benefits, let's goose that minimum wage up a little more to cover any premiums that may be involved.
I know you won't do any of that, but that's what it would take to make me like you. That's what it would take to make me one of the boys.
Beyond that, don't think you're going to shut me up by offering me a "free" trip home.
Nothing is free. You know it, and I know it.
And I resent the idea that you think I'd dicker over my price.
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