Boomers are for the most part computer literate, but what skills should we have when we are navigating the Internet. If you can do these you have basic computer Internet skills. Having and understanding these tasks will make it less confusing when you are in the process of creating or setting up your own product on the internet. It is great if you already know these skills!
1.) Creating folders
2.) Naming and renaming files
3.) “Dragging and dropping”
4.) Copying and moving files/folders
5.) Zipping and unzipping files
6.) Installing a software program
7.) Opening a program
8.) Copying and pasting text
9.) Editing and saving files/documents
10.) Save vs. Save As
11.) “Googling” and other online research
12.) Opening a PDF file with Adobe reader
13.) Using productivity software such as Word and Excel, or OpenOffice
14.) Online business terms
This is part of a post by "As Time goes By" about the problem that the American elite are having with Social Security.
Huffington Post, Nancy Altman, founding co-director of Social Security Works and the co-author of the best book ever written on Social Security, Social Security Works! subtitled, Why Social Security Isn't Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All, posted the known policy positions on Social Security of all the candidates who participated in the Republican debate:
JEB BUSH: Privatize Social Security, Raise the Retirement Age As High as 70, End Medicare
BEN CARSON: Views unknown
CHRIS CHRISTIE: Make Social Security a means-tested welfare program and raise eligibility age to 69
TED CRUZ: Privatize Social Security, Raise the Retirement Age, Cut Benefits
CARLY FIORINA: May Raise Retirement Age
JIM GILMORE: Views unknown
LINDSEY GRAHAM: Cut Social Security Benefits for People who are unmarried and have no children
MIKE HUCKABEE: Against cuts but erroneously believes trust fund has been stolen
BOBBY JINDAL: Privatize Social Security
JOHN KASICH: Privatize Social Security, Cut benefits
GEORGE PATAKI: Raise Retirement Age, Shift More Medicare Cost to Seniors and People With Disabilities
RAND PAUL: Raise the Retirement Age to 70, Means-Test Social Security
RICK PERRY: Social Security is a "Ponzi Scheme," "Monstrous Lie"
MARCO RUBIO: Raise the Retirement Age, May Cut Benefits, Privatize Medicare
RICK SANTORUM: Raise Retirement Age, Means Test Social Security, May cut cost of living adjustments for current and future beneficiaries
SCOTT WALKER: Raise the Retirement Age
There seems to be a consensus, or close enough to call it that: all Republican candidates want to damage Social Security and therefore harm old people.
See anyone missing from that list? Yes, Donald Trump who, Altman quotes him as saying:
"'Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And it's not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.' He made clear, 'I'm not gonna do that!'"
Democratic frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders both advocate expansion of Social Security.
(You will find links for each candidate's statement at Altman's Huffington Post story.)
Here are a few good links about Social Security:
Did you know that Thomas Paine may have been the first person to think up Social Security. If you are historically minded, Nancy Altman explains.
ABC News lists the modest changes that would ensure Social Security for everyone for the next 75 years.
The National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) lists the top ten facts about the program everyone should know.
AARP has a page of facts about Social Security for each state of the union.
The CPBB link I gave you at the top has a lot of charts worth checking out that explain all the great, good things Social Security does for so many millions of Americans.
Let's also congratulate, in absentia, all the wonderful, unnamed people who for 80 years have fought so hard to preserve Social Security against its powerful adversaries - and let's all pledge to be one of them during this endless presidential election season.
- See more:
Engineer, physicist, and futurist Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856–January 7, 1943) is among the most radical rule-breakers of science and is regarded by many as the greatest inventor in human history. His ground breaking work paved the way for wireless communication and imprinted every electrical device we use today.
One of the most surprising, most obscure, yet most incisive of Tesla's predictions peers into the future of society's changing gender roles and considers how the advent of wireless technology would empower women, liberating them to develop our full intellectual potential repressed by the patriarchy for centuries.
In January of 1926, a reporter named John B. Kennedy interviewed Tesla about these very ideas. The piece was published in Colliers magazine under the title "When Woman Is Boss" and is discussed in Margaret Cheney's excellent Tesla: Man Out of Time (public library), which remains the most insightful and dimensional perspective on the great inventor's mind and spirit. Here is some that article:
After reflecting on the future uses of wireless technology and practically predicting the iPhone, Tesla points to the empowerment of women as one of the most significant effects of technology on the world of tomorrow:
It is clear to any trained observer, and even to the sociologically untrained, that a new attitude toward sex discrimination has come over the world through the centuries, receiving an abrupt stimulus just before and after the World War.
This struggle of the human female toward sex equality will end in a new sex order, with the female as superior. The modern woman, who anticipates in merely superficial phenomena the advancement of her sex, is but a surface symptom of something deeper and more potent fermenting in the bosom of the race.
It is not in the shallow physical imitation of men that women will assert first their equality and later their superiority, but in the awakening of the intellect of women.
Tesla goes on to predict "the acquisition of new fields of endeavor by women" and "their gradual usurpation of leadership" as the inevitable result of that previously repressed potential, newly uncorked by the interconnectivity and educational empowerment that wireless technology would make possible:
Through countless generations, from the very beginning, the social subservience of women resulted naturally in the partial atrophy or at least the hereditary suspension of mental qualities which we now know the female sex to be endowed with no less than men.
But the female mind has demonstrated a capacity for all the mental acquirements and achievements of men, and as generations ensue that capacity will be expanded; the average woman will be as well educated as the average man, and then better educated, for the dormant faculties of her brain will be stimulated to an activity that will be all the more intense and powerful because of centuries of repose. Woman will ignore precedent and startle civilization with their progress
Boomers and Seniors want to stay at home as we age, but what support do we think we have:
Older adults and professionals have different perspectives on what it takes to age independently.
Community infrastructure:
Nearly 8 in 10 older adults (78 percent) are generally satisfied with their community’s infrastructure and a majority (92 percent) say it is easy for them to get where they need to go.
However, only 22 percent of older Americans surveyed find public Transportation “acceptable,” and nearly 3 in 10 rate it as “poor” (28 percent).
Staying at home and independent:
A majority of older adults have not changed residences in more than 20 years (58 percent), and 75 percent say they intend to live in their current home for the rest of their lives.
Many older adults have been proactive in making home improvements to help them age in place, including 34 percent who have made bathroom upgrades and 28 percent who have improved lighting.
Both older adults and professionals who work with them would like to see services that would help older Americans with home modifications and repairs (62 percent and 97 percent, respectively).
When asked what concerns they have about living independently, adults 60 and older say they are most concerned about becoming a burden to others (42 percent), experiencing memory loss (41 percent) and not being able to get out of the house and/or drive (34 percent)
Community Connections: Improving Support
Older Americans and the professionals who serve them have different ideas of what the community can do to support older adults.
Aging Preparedness:
While a majority of both older adults and professionals say older Americans are prepared for the overall process of aging (86 percent and 77 percent, respectively), older adults are far more confident.
Fewer professionals surveyed feel older Americans are “very prepared” to age, compared with older adults (10 percent and 42 percent).
Community Support:
Fifty-nine percent of older adults say that young people today are less supportive of seniors than their own generation was in previous years. Only about a quarter (24 percent) see the same levels of support, and just 12 percent say young people are more supportive of older adults.
Yet, 79 percent of seniors express confidence that they would be able to find help and support in their communities as they age.
Although older adults and professionals agree their communities offer seniors a good quality of life (79 percent and 92 percent, respectively), fewer than half of older adults (47 percent, down from 54 percent in 2014 and 49 percent in 2013) and professionals (37 percent) say their community is doing enough to prepare for the needs of retiring Baby Boomers.
Keeping Active:
Older adults rank running errands such as buying groceries and picking up medications as the top way they participate in the community (54 percent), followed by church or other faith-based organizations (52 percent), and attending local social events and events to watch their grandchildren (40 percent and 40 percent).
In comparison, professionals see older adults participating in the community most through church or other faith-based organizations (91 percent).
For complete survey results, visit www.ncoa.org/UnitedStatesofAging.
About The United States of Aging Survey. The United States of Aging Survey is an annual survey conducted by the by the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, National Council on Aging and UnitedHealthcare
Preparing for Anticipated Health and Ageing Expenses is a concern to professionals more than seniors.
Professionals place a much higher emphasis on finances than older adults and are especially concerned when it comes to older adults’ ability to maintain health care costs as they age.
Financial concerns:
The top financial worries that keep older Americans up at night are increasing costs of living (28 percent) and unexpected medical expenses (24 percent).
Professionals express an even greater level of concern about unexpected medical expenses: Eighty-seven percent rank this issue as their top financial concern.
Other financial concerns professionals have include not having enough disposable income (84 percent compared with 18 percent of seniors nationally) and being vulnerable to financial scams (83 percent compared with only 13 percent of older adults).
Additionally, while less than a quarter of older adults anticipate needing support managing their finances as they age, the majority of professionals stress this will be a need (19 percent and 86 percent, respectively).
Maintaining financial fitness:
Older adults and professionals agree that saving money (39 percent and 43 percent, respectively) and sticking to a budget (43 percent and 38 percent) are among top ways to maintain financial fitness.
However, professionals are more inclined to anticipate future needs, suggesting that older adults work beyond retirement age and reduce housing costs to help manage finances (43 percent and 36 percent, respectively).
Older adults focus more on short-term ways to manage finances by taking advantage of senior discounts and limiting leisure expenses as part of their financial management strategies (43 percent and 36 percent, respectively).
Health care costs:
Nearly half (43 percent) of older Americans say they are very confident they will be able to afford health care costs as they age.
In a marked contrast, only 3 percent of professionals have the same level of confidence in the aging population.
Rather, almost two-thirds (62 percent) of professionals report they are not
confident older adults will be able to afford their health care costs.
When it comes to obstacles older adults face in trying to access health care, older adults and professionals report the same top three concerns:
- Not understanding insurance benefits or health coverage (20 percent and 87 percent, respectively)
- The cost of medication (25 percent and 81 percent)
- The cost of health care services (24 percent and 78 percent), though professionals express a greater level of concern.
