As a former resident of Massachusetts, I read the local newspapers regularly — there is much more “truth” to be found in local news than in the national propaganda organs like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal — in particular the Greenfield Recorder. Since it’s a newspaper that no doubt fancies itself as “liberal,” I was a little taken aback by the noxious Taylor Jones cartoon in the Aug. 19 edition: a depiction of a couple of happy oldsters in a canoe called SOCIAL SECURITY that, unbeknownst to them, is about go over a waterfall whose waters inscribe in chillingly ghostly letters “INSOLVENCY 2035.”
What utter nonsense! Social Security is one of the most successful of federal programs, one that has kept generations of old people out of a miserable poverty — and there’s no reason for it to become “insolvent” ever. All that’s needed is for the cap on income taxable for Social Security to be raised a bit, or a lot! Why not to $500,000? And why not to $1,000,000 since all too many doing “work” that is harmful to society fall into those income brackets? They might as well contribute a little bit to society.
Social Security is and will remain the untouchable “third rail” of American politics, unless people are dumbed down enough to believe what is in essence right-wing (i.e., business, corporate) propaganda of the kind this cartoon represents. The cartoon is particularly noxious for the illiterate masses of Generation Z and Y and X voters who don’t know any better and, unwittingly, agree with Ronald Reagan that “government is not the solution, but the problem.” In brief: a particularly ignorant cartoon, especially from a cartoonist apparently in the full grip of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Andrzej Warminski
Chesterfield, New Hampshire