Editorial Roundup

Bennington Banner (Vt.), June 8:

If you suspect that you may not have enough money to retire, a new study says you’re right on the money (pun intended). Rather, about half of you are.

The Government Accountability Study, which was prepared at the request of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., found that many workers who are approaching retirement have limited savings. The study’s findings, released on June 2, concluded that 52 percent ”“ or more than half ”“ of households where residents are 55 and older have no retirement savings at all.

Those in the 55-64 age group who do have some retirement savings have a median amount of $104,000 socked away, which would equate to a $320 per month protected annuity. Households with residents who are 65-74 have an average savings of $148,000, or $649 per month.

Forty percent of retirees worry about “not having enough income to get by,” according to the study. We’d wager a higher percentage of people younger than 55 worry about what they’ll live on next week, let alone in retirement.

According to the Levy Economics Institute, wage growth has slowed and become highly unequal over the last few decades, with the labor share of national income declining by about 10 percent since 1980. Meanwhile, those who own capital have increased their share of income by more than a third.

Once Americans are older than 65, about half get most of their income from Social Security. The amount of income received is based on the average wages earned over a worker’s lifetime, with a maximum amount of $102,000 as of 2008.

The average benefit to Social Security recipients is just under $16,000 per year, however.

Which is where Sanders came in.

He supports an expansion of Social Security benefits. In March Sanders proposed the Social Security Expansion Act, designed to make the wealthiest Americans pay a fair share of their income into the federal program.

Under current law, the amount of income subject to the payroll tax is capped at $118,500. That means someone making millions pays the same amount in payroll taxes as some making $118,500 a year. Only 6 percent of Americans earn more than that cap amount.

The proposed legislation would subject all income over $250,000 to the payroll tax, which would impact only the top 1.5 percent of wage earners, according to the Center for Economic Policy Research.

“This report makes it clear that there is a retirement crisis in America today. At a time when half of all older workers have no retirement savings, we need to expand, not cut, Social Security benefits so that every American can retire with dignity,” Sanders said in a press release.

The Social Security Expansion Act he’s proposing is designed to make the wealthiest Americans pay the same share of what they earn into the program as do others. This tweak of the current program would extend its life through 2065 while also allowing Social Security benefits to increase, on average, by $65 per month.

Social Security payroll taxes are not due on earnings above the Social Security tax cap.

Sanders says it will raise the minimum benefit enough to bring millions of senior citizens out of poverty.

Something has to give, at least for those of us retiring well into the future, and this idea Sanders has proposed makes sense.

“Social Security is the most successful program in our nation’s history. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we have got to demand that the richest people in this country pay their fair share,” he said.

Begun in 1935 as a program of social insurance and benefits, Social Security’s benefits include retirement and disability income, Medicare and Medicaid and death and survivorship benefits. The federal program currently has a $2.8 trillion surplus, which will enable the program to pay all promised benefits until 2033, after which it will be able to pay around 75 percent of all promised benefits.

Sanders’ proposed Social Security Expansion Act would extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 45 years, through 2060.

If you’re not planning to retire sooner than 2033, it may behoove you to support Sen. Sanders’ proposed legislation.

The Nashua Telegraph (N.H), June 9:

The fine print on the back of tickets to sporting events contains a disclaimer that says a team and its players are not to blame for accidents that befall fans at the game. Moreover, the disclaimer says, it is the responsibility of fans to remain alert at all times.

It is certainly that, but baseball itself shares some of the responsibility for the accident that happened at Fenway Park in Boston last Friday night.

In case you hadn’t heard, it happened in the second inning, when a fan sitting in the second row of seats was struck in the head by a piece of the bat that broke off in the hands of Oakland A’s shortstop Jed Lowrie.

The scene was horrific. As blood poured forth from her wound, a fan took off his shirt to try and stop the bleeding. Medical personnel responded immediately and she was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital. Thankfully, she is expected to survive.

It could have happened at any park where fans are seated closer to the action on the field than some of the players. Demand for such seats are so high that the Red Sox added two extra rows down front some years back. Those are premium seats, but they are dangerous seats, too, as Friday’s incident demonstrated.

There have been incidents at Fenway before, but not like this.

The closest parallel, perhaps, came in 1958 when Ted Williams flipped his bat toward the dugout in a fit of pique after being called out strikes. The bat flew into the stands and struck 60-year-old Gladys Heffernan in the head. Mrs. Heffernan, who was the housekeeper for Sox General Manager Joe Cronin, was hospitalized but recovered.

In 1982, a 4-year-old New Hampshire fan, Jonathan Keane, was struck in the head by a scorching foul ball. Nobody who was watching will ever forget the sight of Red Sox slugger Jim Rice taking the boy in his arms and carrying him into the Red Sox clubhouse so the child could get medical attention. He also survived.

Fortunately, such incidents are rare, and nothing like what happened Friday night had taken place at a Major League Baseball game before ”“ at least not in recent memory.

But it was bound to happen because of fundamental changes that have taken place in the game over the past 20 years. Moreover, the powers-that-be in MLB knew they had a problem. (Full disclosure: The family that owns The Telegraph also owns the Pittsburgh Pirates MLB franchise.)

For more than a hundred years, bats were made of white ash, a hardwood that remained largely intact when it broke, thanks largely to its straight grain. It was uncommon for pointed pieces of a bat to go flying around the ballpark when ash was the wood of choice.

In recent years, however, more batters have switched to maple, which is more likely than ash to shatter into multiple pieces. Maple bats may be harder, but when they break, “maple bats were three times more likely than ash bats to break into two or more pieces,” according to a 2008 MLB study.

Baseball took steps to address the maple issue and officials say incidents of bat breakage are down by almost half from less than 10 years ago, but the problem of shattered maple flying through the air persists, as we saw on Friday night.

Yes, baseball fans need to be alert. But so do the people who run baseball. They need to consider, for instance, extending the protective netting in ballparks from dugout to dugout.

There is precedent for that: The death of a young fan who was struck and killed by a puck spurred the National Hockey League to require that teams install netting at either end of the rink at the start of the 2002-03 season.

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