Oct. 21, 2003 - 18:07 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Pensioner's Prison

In the 1950's era I knew and was frequently around folks like me who hadn't been able to put aside anything toward retirement. I don't think too many of us with families were able to.

I had a morning paper route that I delivered before going to my regular day job and on that route were many pensioners. It was easy to see what the effect of the paper rising a nickle a week was to them. Some would go to Sunday only, some would go to daily only. Some would decide what to give up and keep the paper the week around, but they all gave up something.

Heather and I shopped for groceries at a nearby supermarket and now and then I'd turn my back when seeing one of my customers who didn't have a dog taking dog food off the shelf and putting it in their basket.

Things like that made me make up my mind to work forever if I could. Didn't like the thought of retiring anyway, the people I worked with, most of them, were like family to me, made me feel as one with the larger world. Not that I didn't value my family as tops, I just wanted to be part of more. I'd still be working if I could. However in 1990 retirement was more or less forced on me. A buyout type of thing it was. The stinker was that there was this "window of opportunity" (retire or face getting laid off or your workload doubling). So I came out of it with five years added to my seniority for pension computation, health care with a HMO, and medicare reimbursement. In that respect we made out like proverbial burglars.

Heather and I have been reasonably comfortable as we don't live an elevated "do all" life style. But the cost of living increase on our Social Security doesn't seem to match up with the price and rate rise on everything nowadays.

Then, reading about the business failures, the swindling scandals by the biggies of the corporate world, and the general state of the economy as well as reading about companies cutting out pensions and noting that our health care copays have drastically increased over the last two years and the rise in prices and rates, makes us wonder when the other shoe will drop.

It makes Heather and I realize just how fortunate we are to have the benefits we do. Yet, we see how our income shrinks compared to the cost of existence and remember what we saw in the 1950's. It has been ever thus I think, going on a pension means one gradually falls behind and begins to cut back on many things, eventually living a life of privation.

I don't have a log book mind nor do I keep a timeline date book, but it seems to me that Franklin Delano Roosevelt touted Social Security as a thing which would back up what a person could put by for life after work years. When it comes to putting by for later or feeding and providing all things for a family, especially medical care it doesn't seem to me that most folks can afford to put much aside for their retirement years.

It is easy to say, "Don't have so much family," or, "Let the county and medicaid take care of your parents and loved ones instead of you being out of time and/or money." Seems to me that Thoreau said words to the effect, "The average man lives a life of quiet desparation," or words having the same meaning and hit the nail smack on the head.

Of course if we had been intensively trained and shown by example by our families to put back something without fail, and to limit the amount of family we could afford and still put aside pension money there would have been no need for bureaucratic Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, I wonder, how many of us would have paid any attention ?

I also see where some health care providers no longer take medicare or medicaid patients and that HMO's are getting a bit particular too.

Guess a word to the wise (if there are any of us in that condition) is don't live too long after you retire. Or, you too will be in a Pensioner's Prison . . . . . . . . . . . .

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