The Infrastructure Of Aging. Steve Williamson welcomes back Max Richtman, President and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare to discuss the $400 billion for elderly care included in President Biden’s infrastructure bill.
Though it’s not what many consider infrastructure, Richtman stresses the importance of the proposal as an additional 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day. At some point, most of those people will require some form of care. It’s more efficient and humane to care for them in their own homes. But, Richtman says, “There simply are not enough homecare workers in this country to meet the demand now, let alone in the future.”
Richtman explains that one of the reasons for the shortage is that salaries are so pitiful (the average salary is just $17,000 a year). He adds, “One of the things I find that is so amazing is that we are relying on unpaid caregivers in this country. Mostly women. They often have to leave the work force.” According to Richtman, this compounds the problem, noting that when they leave the workforce, they’re not paying into Social Security. As a result, they’re sacrificing their own Social Security benefits in the future. He says the proposed bill would create a caregivers’ formula that would be applied to the Social Security structure so their benefits would not be reduced.
Richtman notes the proposal is about 20 percent of the president’s infrastructure bill. “I think it’s important to give Biden credit for trying to prioritize elderly homecare in this package,” he says. “We’re going to have more seniors requiring care with fewer young people around to provide it.”
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Cole Interview – Podcast May 17, 2021
Advice From The Distant Past. Democratic Perspective welcomes Juan Cole back to the show to discuss his new book The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam – A New Translation from the Persian. Cole is a professor at the University of Michigan and commentator on the modern Middle East and South Asia through his website Informed Comment.
Cole’s research suggests Khayyam is what is often called a frame author. He says the poems were likely written by various people over centuries. But they were all attributed to Khayyam. Centuries later, the poems were discovered by Edward Fitzgerald who translated about 50 of them. They became beloved in Victorian England and the US during the Gilded Age. According to Cole, “By 1900 you had a new edition of the poetry coming out every day…it was tremendously influential. T.S. Elliot started writing poetry under its influence that was well thought of by all the modernists. And Robert Frost’s Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Night is actually an homage to this poetry.”
A careful reading of these 800-year-old poems shows another side of the Middle East and may dispel common stereotypes. They also have much to say about how to best live our lives. For example, by dismissing the “fear of hellfire and the hope of paradise,” Cole says the poetry seems to tell us not to worry about death and our own non-existence. “I think what Khayyam was saying is don’t spend a lot of time worrying about that. It’s that time you take away from living in the moment.”
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