There’s a common misconception that young people simply do not care about Social Security. But research by pollster Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners shows precisely the opposite.

“The younger you are, the more opposed you are to raising the age of retirement,” Lake said, speaking at an Economic Policy Institute forum on Engaging Younger Generations in the Social Security Debates. Also at the forum was Dr. Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School, and EPI Researcher Kathryn Edwards.

Lake surmises that younger people’s opposition to raising the retirement age could be because Generation Y – her terminology for anyone under 30 – has much higher rates of volunteerism than Generation X and do not view life as a “zero sum game.”

The general finding of numerous surveys conducted by Lake Research Partners discovered voters under 30 are considerably more likely to oppose raising the retirement age than other age groups. When asked whether they favored or opposed increasing the retirement age to 69, an astounding 70 percent of Americans under the age of 30 said they opposed. 61 percent of Americans age 50-64 said they would oppose such a measure and only 46 percent of citizens over 65 said they opposed raising the retirement age.

According to Lake, the remedy to ensure Social Security is around for the younger generations who want it is to remove a little known tax rate cap which only taxes the first $160,000 of a person’s annual income. “Nobody real makes 160,000.” Teresa Ghilarducci provided statistical proof that the elderly are not cannibalizing America’s youth. Wages will increase 35 percent from 2003 to 2030 yet spending on retirement security will only increase 13 percent. “If you spend money on pensions (Social Security), you won’t take away from spending on the youth.”

The possibilities of raising the retirement age, a scare that may become reality after the Obama administration appeared to have finally caved on the topic, leaves the elderly with two scenarios. The first is that they retire sooner and thus, with less than the full amount they had initially anticipated. This will result with a lower material standard of living as the three largest costs for seniors: energy; food; and health care are all rising in cost above inflation. Their other option is to continue working but this has shown to be negative on their health. They also lose much prized leisure time which is linked to a happier and a healthier lifestyle and they would have to fight for a job in the worst economy since the Great Depression.

The belief that people are living longer is skewed because according to Ghilarducci those that are living longer are in the top 2 percent of wealthy Americans. They have better access to health care and can afford to retire or work at their own pace.

Kathryn Edwards, EPI Researcher and author of “A Young Person’s Guide to Social Security” concluded the day with a brief presentation on how to convince young people to care about Social Security. To her the answer is simply just showing them the facts. She praised the Social Security system as it continued to achieve its goal by lowering the poverty rate among seniors even during its hardest test ever in 2007-2009.

She framed the need to protect Social Security in perspective for a recent college graduate. Assuming a person retired when they were eligible 45 years after having graduated college and entered the workforce, they would have lived through: seven recessions; oil shocks; oil embargoes; three bailouts; the dot-com bust; several government shut downs; and too many wars. That is why Americans, young and old, need a system of guaranteed retirement that is paid for by them and their employers.

People in the sixties, fifties, or even forties are unlikely to feel the burn of changes to Social Security according to Edwards but she believes young people are the ones at risk, "it’s yours to lose."

Finally, Edwards succinctly encapsulates the argument for those on the left who want to save Social Security and their frustration at the current climate of axing benefits and raising the retirement age. “If you’re young the only reason why Social Security won’t be there is because we politically came to the conclusion that we cannot afford it.”

With Isaiah J. Poole

When the Speak Out for Good Jobs Now Tour rolls into Miami on Saturday, it will be in a state where bad economic conditions are being made more harsh by a series of conservative policy actions.

“Florida workers have fared worse than the nation as a whole in terms of wages, benefits and employment levels,” concludes a recent report by Demos and the Florida International University Research Institute on Social & Economic Policy. At 11.5 percent in 2010, unemployment was at its highest rate in 30 years. In the Miami metropolitan area, the unemployment rate in May was 13.7 percent, having risen sharply from the beginning of the year.

To make the dire situation even worse, Governor Rick Scott has implemented a series of austerity measures that reduced taxes at the cost of government and service jobs, and unemployment benefits. He and the Republican-controlled legislature cut $3 billion from spending on entitlement programs, social services, public-employee pensions and schools. Tuition at state universities were increased by $42 million. Scott also signed House Bill 7005 into law, which reduced the maximum number of weeks someone is able to receive state unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to 23 weeks. Benefits would be cut as the unemployment rate declines, and if somehow the state manages to lower its unemployment rate to 5 percent, then an unemployed person will only receive a maximum of 12 weeks of unemployment benefits.

Also, unemployed or needy Floridians who apply for public assistance, unemployment benefits, Medicare, or welfare must submit and pass drug testing to be eligible. This comes months after Gov. Scott’s decision to sign a bill into law that randomly drug tests state employees, the only state to have this requirement. Critics questioned the drug testing requirement because of Scott’s connection with Solantic, an urgent care chain he co-founded that has drug testing as a significant share of its business.

Scott was bent on lowering taxes for the wealthy at all costs, asking the legislature for $459 million in corporate tax cuts and $508 million in property tax cuts. He did not get all the tax cuts he wanted, but the ones he did get, combined with his refusal to ask the wealthy to share the sacrifices needed to balance the state’s budget, came with high costs. Just one such cost: 130 jobs lost from St. Johns River Water Management, an entity tasked with protecting the state’s water resources, will be eliminated in an effort to shave $30 million from the budget and meet Scott’s and the Florida Legislature’s new strategies.

In terms of building the green economy of the future, Florida under conservative governance is failing. It ranks 49th in terms of how ‘green’ its economy is, according to a Brookings Institution study.. Green jobs account for only 1.4 percent of the economy. Although the number of jobs increased between 2003-2010, the rate is still only half the national average. Plus, in February Scott turned down more than $2 billion in federal money to establish a high speed rail linking Tampa and Orlando. Florida Rep. John Mica, a Republican who is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said it "defied logic" that Scott would turn down the money and the thousands of jobs it would have created at a time when the unemployment rate in Florida is hovering around 12 percent.

Add to that not-so-surprising indications that Florida seniors are delaying their retirement, which is bad news for young people and recent college graduates who will be crowded out by seniors clinging to the job market for survival. An AARP survey in January found 44 percent of Floridians over 50 said that if the economy fails to improve this year, they will delay their retirement.

State employees have also made a trip to the chopping block. Scott signed a budget that eliminates almost 4,500 state jobs, and there will be thousands more lost at the state and local level in the months ahead. Government employment in the state in June was down 41,500 from what it was a year earlier. Scott Brown, chief economist with Raymond James Financial in St. Petersburg, told the St. Petersburg Times that the government layoffs are "a pretty significant drag on the economy."

In the midst of all the hardships, high unemployment, and moves for austerity, the campaign coffers of Scott and his fellow conservatives have not been feeling the pinch. The state Republican party received a record $3.4 million in donations between April 1 and June 30. That is the highest amount raised for an off-election year since 1997. That money largely came from electric utilities, health care, and insurance corporations.

Obviously, the corporate class that bankrolled the complete conservative domination of Florida’s politics likes what it sees. But the stories on the Speakout tour page from Floridians say this is not at all working for people struggling to get into or stay in the middle class.

A woman identified as Virginia Viel, who used to work at a travel agency before its business collapsed in the wake of recession wrote, "I have sent out over 500 resumes without hardly any response, I have a BA in Communications, over 10 years of working experience. I was offered three months ago a part-time job at 9.50 an hour with no benefits and no advancement. I am single and living with my aunt, needless to say I do not have a savings account, credit cards, health insurance, retirement plan. I had to sell my car when I was working because I could not afford the payments, and insurance, I had to go into savings when I working and laid off. I am angry and depressed how can this be allowed to happen in this country. Corporate America has taken their employees and made us working slaves and our government has allowed corporations to make us working welfare."

There are thousands of stories like this one among the nearly 1 million people unemployed in Florida. They, and the 24 million unemployed and underemployed people nationwide, need President Obama and the Congress to support a jobs agenda. This week, the legislative staff of Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., conferred with activists to fine tune the congressman’s Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill. The goal is to make that bill part of a national grassroots jobs movement that would say no to Rick Scott’s job-killing and hope-killing austerity policies and yes to rebuilding Florida’s, and the nation’s, economy for middle-class prosperity. While that legislation is being refined, it is not too soon to send Scott and the right-wing austerity mongers a very firm message.

The Speakout For Good Jobs Now Miami event is 2 p.m. Saturday at the Miami Dade College, North Campus, Lehman Theater in the Arts Complex.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer spoke today at the Economic Policy Institute about the need for Congress and the White House-Republican budget deficit talks to focus on America’s most important issue of the day: job creation.

“The view that Congress should focus on jobs and deficit reduction is coming back into vogue,” said Schumer, and that “the rigid get-rid-of government mantra has crashed into things people like.”

Schumer’s theme was that jobs creation is the most important issue facing Americans today. Jobs come first, according to Schumer, and deficit reduction will follow in the long run.

Echoing the frustration that many Americans are feeling as the economy slugs to recovery and Republicans filibuster economic progress, Schumer refuses to believe that “the same country which built the interstate highway system and invented the Internet, the cell phone and GPS will now abandon the 14 million Americans who are looking for a job and put the economic future of an entire generation of young people at risk, because this Congress can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”

The time has finally come, as shown in the recent election in New York’s 26th district where voters said to the Republican Party “slow down.” People do not want to sacrifice Medicare for the sake of tax cuts for the wealthy and big business.

Democrats are willing to compromise to raise the debt ceiling but Schumer insisted that the talks should not be one-sided in favor of Tea Party concerns. Cuts in wasteful spending are important but he stated that there is no difference between wasteful spending in defense or any other domestic program. This is where, Schumer believes, Republicans are being hypocritical by calling for cuts but balking at cutting wasteful defense spending.

He stated that there should be three criteria for putting a comprehensive jobs agenda together. First, the agenda will focus on things that economists tell us will get “the best bang for the buck,” such as actively investing in job creation while avoiding deep immediate cuts, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has suggested. Second, the agenda items must have the support of major stakeholders in the private sector to create a “strong and durable recovery.” Lastly, Schumer said the policies will have a history of attracting bipartisan support.

The senator went on to list some of the programs Democrats are willing to support in the spirit of preventing the economic collapse that would surely follow a failure to raise the debt ceiling. However, Republicans have now rejected actions they formerly advocated, such as payroll tax holiday or making permanent a research and development tax credit. Schumer believes that is because Republicans are willing to jeopardize our economic recovery with gamesmanship in order to be better situated for the 2012 election.

Throughout the speech Schumer went to great lengths to prove that Democrats were willing to compromise with the GOP. The Campaign for America’s Future is calling for a different approach, calling on the Democrats to back an approach that balances spending-cut proposals with substantial tax revenues on millionaires and billionaires to spur job creation and economic growth.

Making a substantial dent in current unemployment numbers requires that Democrats hold the line, compelling their colleagues across the aisle to display a willingness to negotiate. The New York senator was right to call out Republican flip-flopping, but he spent little time proposing thoroughly Democratic solutions to high unemployment or assuaging the very real fear among the middle-class that the U.S. may drop into a double-dip recession. You can encourage your senators and representatives to support a plan for deficit reduction that calls for “shared sacrifice” by the wealthy as well as the rest of America, by sending them this message.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear in October that his first priority is to limit President Obama to one term. Republicans aren’t just opposing Obama anymore. By dragging their feet and ignoring any discussion of increasing tax revenue they are opposing economic recovery.