Welcome to the United States of America - a nation of 80-year-old bricklayers. Once upon a time here - you could retire when you were in your sixties. That’s no more.

In another sign of just how bad our nation is treating the working class - a new study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that most Americans today will have to work until their late seventies - before they can think about retiring.

According to the study - If you make roughly $31,000 a year - which is about the average for 40% of Americans - and more than twice minimum wage, by the way - you’ll have to work until you’re 76-years-old just to have a chance at retiring.

And I say chance because even if you do work until 76 - you still only have a fifty-fifty shot at having enough money to live off of in retirement - a fifty-fifty chance IF you don’t get sick - IF your house isn’t blown away in a tornado - and IF you’re pension isn’t stolen by banksters on Wall Street.

The picture is even grimmer if you earn minimum wage - about $12,000 a year - then get ready to work until you’re 84 years old - that's right, 84 years old!

And again that’s just to have a fifty-fifty shot at retiring…so you might as well work until you're ninety.

Considering that the average life expectancy in this nation is about 78-years-old - we’re basically telling Americans now that they literally will work until they die.

How did this happen in America - the wealthiest nation on the planet?

In large part, it's because the 400 wealthiest Americans - our billionaires - our American oligarchs - control more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans COMBINED! That’s right - 400 people, 400 Americans own more money and more stuff than 150 million other Americans.

You can fit 400 people into this TV studio - and they’d have more wealth than all the people who live in the states of California - New York - Florida - Texas - Illinois - Pennsylvania - Ohio - Michigan - and let’s throw Kansas in there - COMBINED.

And most of those people who are “out-wealthed” by America’s oligarchs - are those same people who will be working until they die.

What’s the point of having more money in your family than most of the world's nations - when right down the street you have an 84-year-old with cataracts and a bad back flipping hamburgers at McDonalds just to survive day-to-day.

Is that REALLY the type of America that we envision?

After 1932 - it only took 30 years - just 30 years - for Democratic and Republican presidents - for Democratic AND REPUBLICAN presidents - to turn American around from a nation where people were living in tents on the street and literally starving to death - into a nation with a strong and large middle-class where a family of four could survive on one paycheck - and afford to own a home - and a car - and send their kids to college - and have a vacation once a year - and then retire at an age young enough to still enjoy life.

That is what progress looks like - improving the quality of life for more and more people. That’s what we call the American Dream.

And those Democratic and Republican presidents - from FDR to Eisenhower to Kennedy to Nixon - did it by taxing the rich at 91 to 74 percent, and investing in infrastructure and a strong social safety net.

But then it only took 30 years - starting in 1980 with Reagan's election - to destroy the American dream - so that nowadays you have to plunge deep into debt just to make ends meet - so that today only the lucky few can retire before they die.

Republicans in Congress say in fact we need to raise the retirement age for Social Security - as though making it harder for people to retire is some kind of a sign of progress.

It’s not - it’s more proof that we’re still going backwards

To go forward - we need to lower the Social Security and Medicare retirement age in America…it’s a program I call “Cash for Geezers”.

It’s really a simple concept - you raise the tax rates on the millionaires and billionaires in America back to what they were under Republican President Richard Nixon - 70% - and you shore up Social Security by lifting the cap so that Bill Gates will pay the same percentage of his income as you and I do into the Social Security Trust Fund.

Then you drop the retirement age to 55.

That way you give the geezers a rest - and let them enjoy life in retirement - and you also cut unemployment in half and open up the labor pool for the younger generation of Americans who right now are staring at a 24% unemployment rate.

In fact, it should tighten up the labor market enough that wages will rise, which will increase tax collections, which will solve the deficit problem and pay for the retirees.

Everybody wins - except the billionaires who have to pay the same tax rate as they did for most of 50 years in American - and they frankly won’t even notice.

I don’t know about you - but to me - this Republican idea of forcing Americans to work until they die is unacceptable - this isn’t a death camp…this is the United States of America.

Let’s rebuild our middle-class - and take care of our elderly.

I think Cash for Geezers is a great place to start.

That's The Big Picture.