OPINION:
Thank you for running the timely “Picking seniors’ pockets” by Terrence Scanlon (Commentary, Tuesday). I say timely because I’m at the age at which I will soon be eligible to become a member of AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, and just received another invitation from the organization to join.
Mr. Scanlon rightly brought to the public’s attention AARP’s position against any and all attempts to reform Social Security, even if those reforms would not take effect until years from now, long after today’s seniors have passed on. With advances in medicine, longer life and better health in one’s golden years, such reforms only make sense.
Although I’ve already paid into the system for more than 30 years, I would be more than willing to work a year or two extra in order to help save the goose that lays the golden egg. But AARP won’t have any of that. What about rolling back the retirement age a few years for adolescents who have not even started to put money into the system yet? No way, says AARP. It wants to “save” Social Security.
Notice how the AARP definition of saving Social Security (no changes to the system, ever) and mine (keep it from going bankrupt) are wildly different. AARP is an organization that has become self-serving and corrupt while masquerading as a protector of the elderly. I will never join AARP.
BRENT CAREY
Springfield, Va.
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