Save a job – retire earlier! Duh!
Representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat – Ohio) is on the media circuit promoting his rather novel idea on how to “create” jobs for younger people who are trying to enter the work force but can’t because of the recession.
The Congressman has proposed legislation that would allow people to take voluntary early retirement at age 60 instead of age 62, as the law now stands.
Kucinich, who ran for the Democratic nomination for President in both 2004 and 2008, estimates that about 25% of those eligible to retire at age 62, or about 1 million people, would choose to take early retirement under his plan. He claims that this is a conservative estimate, since about 70% of those who can retire at 62 do so now.
These early retirees would, of course, collect social security earlier, after having worked fewer years and contributed less to Social Security. And then we’d have to assume that these workers would be replaced by the younger people now looking. And that they would generate the same tax revenues for the government that the early retirees did.
What a plan! Lock in higher costs, with no guarantee of any benefits. This is the kind of logic that put the U.S. into this pickle in the first place.
How does Mr. Kucinich propose to pay for this plan? Why, with government funds, of course! Specifically, with the “extra” unspent stimulus and TARP funds. This, despite the fact that he has spoken repeatedly about voting against the TARP funds because he opposes government interference in the private economy. But, hey, he goes on to say, “Since the money is lying around anyway, let’s use it!” You’d think tax revenues fall out of the sky!
I do not know which is worse, the hypocrisy or the ignorance. What folly! This man has absolutely no business talking about how to create jobs when he has no idea how the economy actually works.
Here’s an idea that is guaranteed to help the economy recover. Why doesn’tMr. Kucinich take voluntary early retirement!
By Sherry Jarrell
Learning from Dogs 
Another option would be to retire the quite old ones and replace them with really much older ones and who, because they have the knowledge but not the modern know-how, would have to contract the assistance of the younger and in the process establish that dialogue that might help us understand the real stupidities most of those quite old ones baby-boomers have gotten us into.
And those who in this case had to retire early should be sent to special retirement homes where they can scratch and wash each other´s backs paying each other fortunes and bonuses by printing their own in-house money.
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Kucinich is not a Senator. He is the Representative from Ohio’s 10th Congressional District.
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Edited original post. Thank you!
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The idea is about as silly as France’s reduction of the working week to 35 hours. This was supposed to create more jobs on the basis that companies would have to hire more people to do the same job.
However, as hiring people in France is horrendously expensive, what companies did was to find any and which way they possibly could to do the same with fewer hours worked by their existing workforces as they did before. As a result, France’s productivity is higher than in the US. Unemployment, however, has remained exactly as it was before and companies’ reluctance to hire anyone has remained exactly the same.
But I have a question for French “thinkers” (almost all on the socialist side, it has to be said.) If 35 hours is better for employment than 38, then why not reduce the hours that can be legally worked to 20? Or 15, or – to take a bold leap into the future – to ONE? I mean, the fewer the better and the higher the employment, no?
I currently live in Germany. Taxes are high here, but the employment insanity is not as in France, where companies are basically seen as part of the social services. It is very expensive to hire people and nigh on impossible to fire anyone useless at their job. Denmark – with much looser employment and “hire-and-fire” laws, has HALF the unemployment rate of France. You’d think they could work it out, wouldn’t you?
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Learning from dogs indeed. At least you have something to aspire to. Dennis Kucinich is not popular, but Bush was, and we can all see where that folly got us. Go, Dennis!!
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