After the 2008 financial crisis (which really should more accurately be called the 2008 Fuck Around And Find Out Event), many observers wrote that rich speculators on the stock market had benefited, but it would be everyday people who paid the cost, for generations to come.
Most folks tend to assume these observations were about lost jobs and incomes, or future taxation to pay for the bailouts big companies got but everyday people didn't. The truth however is that corporate America and the investors who own the companies we work for weren't satisfied with billion dollar bailouts, and saw the aftermath of the crisis as a way to fundamentally alter their relationship with the labor class, to the benefit of the folks who own everything, and the detriment of those of us who work for a living. A good example of this would be the American auto industry, where only a generation ago, workers were able to retire at 55 with healthcare and a good pension; benefits that were clawed back in the wake of post-crisis reorganization of the industry, and simply never returned.
Of course in a humane society, this might be where we'd expect the government to step in; if not to force corporations to provide good pensions, to at least to help people retire with dignity and enough money to survive. That isn't how it actually works right now, but any reasonable person who doesn't want to see grandma eating tins of cat food in her 70's certainly thinks it should. Turns out that Bernie Sanders and eight other Democrat Senators agree, and now the Senator from Vermont is trying to publicly shame Congress to do something about it:
"In his op-ed, Sanders wrote that the loss of pension and fixed benefit plans among American workers—60% of whom had them in the early 1980s, compared to just 4% in 2023—has led to a 23% poverty rate among senior citizens, one of the highest rates compared to other wealthy countries, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development."
The plain and simple truth here is that as the Baby Boomer generation ages out of the workforce, America is speeding towards a retirement crisis; more and more Americans are retiring without any benefits accrued during a lifetime of laboring for capital, and simultaneously politicians from across the political spectrum are trying to raise the retirement age and gut, if not eliminate social security benefits. This isn't an oncoming train, it's more like an avalanche of boulders speeding towards our collective reality; and there will be a very real, and very predictable cost for the vast majority of Americans. A cost paid in miserable existences for seniors, and very real casualties in our society.
The bill Sanders and his allies in the Senate are proposing, the Social Security Expansion Act, would work towards addressing this crisis primarily by forcing the wealthy to pay more into the Social Security payroll tax - which is currently capped in such a way to ensure billionaires pay only a tiny fraction of their fair share into the system.
This is a problem that isn't going to solve itself, and Congress has the ability to address that problem with ready-crafted legislation they could pass right now. Will they? Don't bet your retirement on it buster...