Rick Santorum Proposes Olds Die Off Sooner To Save Social Security

Who is the biggest threat to the Social Security benefits system alive today? Rick Santorum, he knows what's what, he'll tell you. He held a policy meeting with his secret "panel of advisers" (the rows of fetus jars stacked in his basement) and he's got this brain buster to share:  "We can't afford the benefit structure we have because people are living too long." Yeah, shouldn't there be some kind of expiration date on those people? Whatever happened to that thing the Amish do, where they send out their old people out on icebergs smeared in seal blood to be shredded by bears? That sounds cost-effective, yeah?

And another thing! Rick Santorum would like to see a lot less lazy going around and a lot more elderly folks handing over a few more years of their old age to keep working those Wal-Mart greeting posts, because as far as he knows, old people have not bothered very hard trying to monetize the time they spend with their grandchildren, which is socialist.

From Crooks and Liars:  

"Does anybody in this room believe that somebody that 62 years old is too old to work in America today?" Santorum asked. "Social Security was established for people who were too old to work and therefore they needed the support of the federal government."

"Now back in 1936 we probably did and that made sense. Why? Because life expectancy in 1936 was 61. It's now 80... So you have a situation where things have changed, and for our young people it will even be longer. We keep gaining about a month every few years, we gain in life expectancy. And so the idea that we're going to keep the Social Security program locked in on a 1937 actuarial chart makes no sense at all."

Yeah, why lock it in to a 1937 chart when we could just use an 1837 chart, one where all the old people who couldn't afford to stop working just worked until the day they died and never complained to the government about it? It's been downhill from there.  [ Crooks and Liars ]