Social Security & Job Discrimination: The High Court Raises the Bar to Proving Age Bias

Some people propose that the Social Security retirement age be raised further again, as when the program was enacted in 1935 the average lifespan was 59 years. Thus, setting the retirement age at 65 ensured that most workers wouldn't make it.

My question is: Where are we supposed to get the jobs to work at beyond present retirement age? Actual unemployment is near 20% , when you don't use all the Reagan through Clinton era stratagems to under count the unemployed.

In 2009, the Supreme Court gutted age discrimination laws, making it easier to can older people, with their higher health care costs. I see the Democratic Congress and the Democratic President doing NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL to address this outrage by the High Court, which completely ignored the intent of Congress and effectively negated the laws.

At the time the decision was made, liberal legal commentators said that the decision was so utterly outrageous, it would soon be remedied by Congress. A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS & A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT have done nothing. As for the higher health care costs that make older employees less desirable, do you think the health care reform will address that? Is it anything positive, other than a kick in the teeth to the GOP reactionaries?

The Congressional Democratic Party and "Bush 44" (Barack Obama, the politician who praises Ronald Reagan & Judd Gregg, the latter of whom hates his policies and likely loathes him personally) has given us the "No pharmaceutical maker & health insurer left behind" bill (that only the right-wingnuts, in their dissociative fugue, could term "socialism").

No one -- NO ONE -- believes the Democrat's health care "reform" bill actually will cut health care cost inflation as the move from hospitals as non-profit institutions to for-profit money makers over the past generation means that medical cost inflation is inevitable. A single-payer system was the only logical answer. P.S. Our illustrious Democratic President wants atomic power (the mass media ignored the leak at Vermont Yankee nuke plan which happened simultaneously with Obama's announcement of his support for atomic power and loan guarantees for hte industry, a leak that showed how wrong-headed his energy policy is), and he for off-shore drilling, and is going to Louisiana for a photo-op.

The United States is so dysfunctional now, it is beyond satire. We need a parliamentary democracy with proportional representation, and a Senate that is only a place like in Canada where you ship off rich campaign contributors and old pols so they can pad their resume and go to parties (and have no power). I want to vote for a true labor party, a social-democratic party, not the center-right wing of the Republicrat Party that goes under the moniker "Democrats." Democrats who are counting on a reaction against the reactionaries in order to stay in power are fooling themselves.

Here is  a recent Newsweek article on workplace age discrimination:

Keep Young and Beautiful—Especially At Work; How a Supreme Court decision is making age discrimination harder than ever to prove.