Reply #59: I am not at all sure that they cost less or use less

[hfojvt]

Certainly there is no huge cut-off from 54 to 55 in services used, the way there is in tax breaks given. Our city has a Senior Citizen center, in a public building, and the Council on Aging, which is a County department, has a fleet of vans and cars. (Although I just found out that anybody over 18 can use the transportation services - who knew?) If they are not driving, quite often other people are using the roads - on their behalf, and since roads are supported by gas taxes, they are not paying the taxes for that either. Childless people, such as myself, are not using the schools either, but the schools are being used to educate the grandchildren of many elderly people.

What we really don't respect in this society is the working poor. Non-working richer people should not get breaks just because they are elderly. The FICA tax rate, for one, has gone from 4.5% when my dad started working in 1957 to 14.3% when I started working in 1986. Even in 1976 the rate was only 11.7% and then on only the first $15,300 in income, a cap my dad probably exceeded as a GS-12 (to be fair, GS-12s may be exceeding the cap today, except there is no cap for the 3.3% that goes to medicare). My dad, for most of his working life, was paying lower taxes than I am, and his retirement package was much more generous than what is available today. So the taxes they paid for years and years are not equivalent to what we pay today.