Only 25 percent of Americans living past 65 have annual incomes over $33,667

Photo courtesy of rippdemup.com.

The US government and its lackeys in the media need a scapegoat to blame for the nation’s out of control budget deficit. So rather than questioning the wisdom of  pumping up the regimes of dictators like Egypt’s Mubarak with billions in foreign aid over the past 30 years and pouring more billions into fighting two futile wars for a decade, they are increasingly pointing the finger at elderly Americans benefiting from so-called entitlement programs, namely Social Security and Medicare.

Buried in Judith Viorst’s review of Susan Jacoby’s recently published book on the realities of aging titled “Never Say Die,” is this interesting statistic: “only 25 percent of Americans living past age 65 have annual incomes of over $33,667.”

That is to say a majority of American seniors, most of whom worked hard all their lives and paid high payroll taxes into the Social Security system, are now living below the poverty level, and many are relying on food stamps while doing without insurance coverage for dental, optical, or hearing problems.

So where do you look first to solve the deficit problem? Why you start with cutting those entitlement programs – as I've mentioned elsewhere, “entitlement” implies that Social Security and Medicare recipients are unworthy citizens relying on government handouts.

Heaven forbid that you raise the taxes on the wealthy, get out of the war business, and funnel just a small percentage of the billions in foreign aid to those Americans who need it most.