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GOP and Tea BAggers to force government shutdown

One Brow said:
Insolvent still means payouts at 70-75% of the traditional value (at just about the time I'm going to be retiring, so this affects me directly). It's still better than rank poverty. It is not the case that the checks will simply stop.
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So you are completely relying on SS for your retirement? That's your fist mistake. I don't think that's that case however as I seem to recall that you are a teacher. If so I suspect you'll have a better than average pension coming your way from the teacher's union once the government starts paying you not to work.
 
franklin said:
I'm going to pretend you're sincerely asking even though I know you are not. Economists [on both sides] can't really figure this out. The major thing that has been against job growth since 2002 or so is a peak in the labor market participation rate. It could not increase forever so it peaked and has been falling ever since (after 50 or so years of gains). Pundits, and average Americans like you (no offense meant here), like to blame it on this or that to drive an agenda, or, to make sense of it all. The bottom line is it's most likely just collective America doing what collective America wants to do, and that's a good thing.

We can continue to play the blame game, claim raising taxes or lowering them, union advances or decreases, etc. are what caused our favorite era of prosperity or poverty, but there is absolutely no proof in the numbers either way. In fact, graphing about 200 years shows real per capita productivity growth has been 2% per year no matter if it's Obama, Bush, FDR, Coolidge, or George Washington in power. This tells anyone who wants to be remotely rational that somewhere in the middle, somewhere between the anger at the extreme, somewhere the polar agenda's converge to create America. As a side note, isn't it ironic Glenn Beck says the right choices are somewhere in the middle? Wrong use of "irony" I'm sure, but anyway...

Despite all the claims, it has lasted us this long and will continue to do so. I love the extremes because there wouldn't be a middle without them. They make America work. We make America work.



I'm voting for the guy who guarantees clawbacks on shareholders, CEOs, and bondholders that return us to pre-2008 FDICism.
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You gotta go back about a decade before that to reverse the legislation that was really at the core of all this.
 
TroutBum said:
I have to agree with this. I actually don't produce a damn thing.
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He is right you know. No matter how much we love our roley-poley TroutBum he doesn't produce not one damn thing. Well nothing that we can show on the internet anyway.
 
Marcus said:
There are more people working for the government than construction, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined.
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Citation? And does that include the people in those industries that work for the government?

What the hell do all these people do? They are cushy, easy jobs no doubt when compared to farming or mining but they produce nothing. They manufacture nothing and simply create more of a drain on government. They add absolutely nothing to the overall health of the US. We are a country with a massive work force that essentially does nothing.
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So, anyone that works for the FBI, State Department, FDA, SEC, National Weather Service, USPS, Fish and Wildlife Service, Justice Department, National Institute of Health, NASA, FTC, NOAA, or the National Science Foundation, and all soldiers, "have cushy, easy jobs" and "add absolutely nothing to the health of the US. "

Generalizations are fun. They fill in for thought.
 
DeliveryBoy said:
Citation? And does that include the people in those industries that work for the government?



So, anyone that works for the FBI, State Department, FDA, SEC, National Weather Service, USPS, Fish and Wildlife Service, Justice Department, National Institute of Health, NASA, FTC, NOAA, or the National Science Foundation, and all soldiers, "have cushy, easy jobs" and "add absolutely nothing to the health of the US. "

Generalizations are fun. They fill in for thought.
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This thread has now been Koufus'd.

Boom, bitches.
 
KOC BEGONE said:
"Some will be called reds and Communists merely because they believe in economic justice and the brotherhood of man. But we shall overcome." –MLK
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So you wrote a whole anti-Republican post and ended it with a quote from, yep, A REPUBLICAN?????

LOL!!!!!

Of course, if you're quoting MLK, chances are the quote belonged to someone else first.

BANG
 
introducing-charles.jpg
 
Sloanfeld said:
So you wrote a whole anti-Republican post and ended it with a quote from, yep, A REPUBLICAN?????

LOL!!!!!

Of course, if you're quoting MLK, chances are the quote belonged to someone else first.

BANG
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What is republican about about economic justice or what you would call socialism?

Oh and watch this sure glad we have the private sector bringing us back all of the manufacturing jobs. While the Reps are slowly giving back the little rights we have as workers to corporations.


https://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-22-2010/wham-o-moves-to-america
 
Right now the cost of administrating SS is as high as 328,000,000,000.00 That's billions.
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Call me crazy, but that doesn't seem like that much anymore.

Sorry, but it doesn't.

Not when you consider the TRILLION(s) we've/going to dumped/dump into Iraq and Afghanistan. Or the what.... 900 billion thrown away at wall street?

I just don't understand how one can be morally satisfied when we waste billions/trillions on wars and police work around the world and yet stand in horror if granny needs government assistance to pay for her meds.

Seriously, what the hell is up with that?
 
<div style="background-color:#000000;width:520px;"><div style="padding:4px;"><embed src="https://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:video:thedailyshow.com:281722" width="512" height="288" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" base="." flashVars=""></embed><p style="text-align:left;background-color:#FFFFFF;padding:4px;margin-top:4px;margin-bottom:0px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><b><a href="https://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-22-2010/wham-o-moves-to-america">The Daily Show - Wham-O Moves to America</a></b><br/>Tags: <a href='https://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/'>Daily Show Full Episodes</a>,<a href='https://www.indecisionforever.com/'>Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>,<a href='https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow'>The Daily Show on Facebook</a></p></div></div>
 
I think you are overplaying the whole widespread suffering and human misery angle. In 1934 when SS was passed the suffering and misery was a direct result of the Great Depression. Before then the elderly either continued to work or lived with relatives or friends. The GD made finding work for the elderly much more difficult and made it difficult for relatives to take care of older loved ones. Once the GD passed SS would have been entirely unnecessary again for the most part. As with any government entitlement however, once put into place it can't be taken back.

The 1930's census showed that 58% of men over 65 still worked. By 2002 that figure dropped to 18%. It's likely even lower today. The federal government is essentially paying the elderly not to work. Of course there would be mass hysteria and rioting if people over 65 were told they simply had to keep working.
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What was the average price for Insulin back then?

How much was the standard medicine to help control blood pressure and cholesterol?

What about more intensive procedures, such as hip and knee replacement?

I love it when people bring up irrelevant stats while forgetting the real issues that people face currently.
 
The bottom line is it's most likely just collective America doing what collective America wants to do, and that's a good thing.
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So then lets raise taxes!

If the tax cuts that are currently adding billions to our deficit have proven over decades to not stimulate the economy then lets do away with them!

Why is it the federal governments responsibility to provide retirement payments?
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Why is it our responsibility to rebuild Haiti, police the world, wage 3 wars, and spend more than all other industrialized nations COMBINED in defense spending?

Why is the defense dept immune to any slashes to its budget?
 
I would be much more willing to give the republicans credit if they weren't fighting over things like NPR and Plan Parenthood, which is a very very little part of our budget. They do this so they don't have to cut the things that actually cost us money but at the same time appear that they are working to fix things.
 
Marcus said:
So you are completely relying on SS for your retirement? That's your fist mistake. I don't think that's that case however as I seem to recall that you are a teacher. If so I suspect you'll have a better than average pension coming your way from the teacher's union once the government starts paying you not to work.
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First, I teach part-time. From that work, there are deductions into SURS instead of Social Security, but it's little different.

Second, if you've ever tried to live on a teacher's pension, you would not describe it as better-than-average (unless you are averaging people who get no pensions). It's little better than Social Security, if at all.

Third, a working retirmement is a tradition in my family on both sides (my parents were both teachers, so it's almost mandatory for them). Who wants to do nothing for 25-30 years?
 
Marcus said:
I think you are overplaying the whole widespread suffering and human misery angle. In 1934 when SS was passed the suffering and misery was a direct result of the Great Depression. Before then the elderly either continued to work or lived with relatives or friends. The GD made finding work for the elderly much more difficult and made it difficult for relatives to take care of older loved ones. Once the GD passed SS would have been entirely unnecessary again for the most part. As with any government entitlement however, once put into place it can't be taken back.

The 1930's census showed that 58% of men over 65 still worked. By 2002 that figure dropped to 18%. It's likely even lower today. The federal government is essentially paying the elderly not to work. Of course there would be mass hysteria and rioting if people over 65 were told they simply had to keep working.
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You're not going back far enough. Elder care was not an issue that suddenly arose because of the Great Depression. It was a growing problem all over the world for decades that largely coincided with the lengthening of the average lifespan. Because lifespan was lengthening it was nearly impossible to accurately forecast financial needs into the future either for individuals or their families. In fact, the original "benefits age" for SS was placed above average life expectancy.

See: https://aging.senate.gov/crs/aging1.pdf . Same source indicates life expectancy at birth for those born in 2003 will be approximately 77.5 years, nearly 20 years above where it was at in 1930.


Leading causes of death for retirees at the time social security was enacted included basic infectious disease that was easily curable, and infections that are largely seen in as mortal risks among those living below the poverty level (diarrhea and enteritis). Today it's largely heart disease, cancer, and stroke.

What has happened over time is that life expectancy has continued to rise and the demographics of the elderly have changed dramatically. Elderly that previously would have been dead are now alive but are too sick or decrepit to work. In 1900, only 39% of males and 43% of females ever saw 65. By 1997, those numbers increased to 77% of males and 86% of females.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ahcd/agingtrends/01death.pdf

This is especially true in fields that require large amounts of manual labor or time spent in an environment that is not conducive to health (can you imagine a coal miner working into his 70s?).

If you look at the numbers that you provided I don't think you get the "paid not to work effect" that you're projecting out. If you dissect this out you'll see a much larger number of people at the high tail end of age (25+ years over 65) that in previous decades would have been dead and are unable to work bringing the percentage of working people over 65 down. You'll also see a much larger number of people between 65-90 that would not have made it to that age in previous generations, some of whom are working and some of whom aren't. You're also likely to see decreases in working over time simply because career shifts become notably more difficult as persons age and demographics of the working populace shift (it's easier to work as you age, for example, if you run your own small business and have control of your own means of production; also easier if the field you are working in changes less over time; both of which are less common now than ever).

There's a lot of complex demographic factors here that you're papering over by asserting a strict "paid not to work" trade-off. At best, you've provided an argument for either a) increasing the retirement age to reflect changes in life expectancy or b) changing payout levels depending on what age a person chooses to elect benefits. Both of those are probably negotiable. Becoming the only Western country in the world that displays a total indifference to elderly needs is not.

On a different note, do you realize you have unintentionally made an argument for greater government spending during periods of economic weakness by defending SS as a necessity during the great depression? Isn't that the exact opposite of your current position that we need to cut spending drastically now during a time of economic weakness?


Right now the cost of administrating SS is as high as 328,000,000,000.00 That's billions. SS paid out 439 billion in benefits. Roughly speaking, for every four dollars paid out society as a whole bears up to a 3 dollar adminstration cost.
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Those are high end numbers from 2002 provided by a right-wing think tank advocating privitization (you didn't cite the source, so I had to go track it down). Those numbers are created using a set of highly biased assumptions that you can read about yourself if you go through the paper (for example, it charges significant portions of the IRS budget to the SS program as an administrative cost without describing why IRS costs decrease if SS doesn't exist).

Other estimates of administrative costs for 2009 come to $6.2 billion vs $675 billion in payouts. That's greater than 100:1 rather than 4:3.

https://money.usnews.com/money/blog...010/08/05/social-security-costs-exceed-income

CBO studies have repeatedly found that Social Security Administrative costs are significantly lower both in gross terms and as a proportion of the amount of money that comes in than alternative retirement funding arrangements. For example:

https://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/52xx/doc5277/Report.pdf

Page 10 of the PDF provides a nice comparison of costs. Even the CATO institute acknowledges that administration costs for SS are comparatively low because it has a built-in collection agent via the IRS and because they avoid money management fees and functions.


Imagine putting more money in every single worker's pocket as well as cutting 320 billion from the budget. At the very least SS should give workers the choice of opting out if the don't want to participate. Of course they can never do that because the government desperately needs every dollar they can get to keep the sinking ship afloat.
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Actually that would just make the system less efficient, but that's a different discussion.
 
Kicky--It would be easier to listen to what you are saying if you gave credit to Marcus for the "paid not to work" claim. You're taking those who truly need help and lumping them in with everyone else who does not. I'd guess that's the majority (at least at the front end years), but it doesn't really matter either way. The problem I see is we're paying people who have no assistance needs whatsoever. I knew a millionaire, with two pensions, still working full time and 35+ years on that pension, and was still collecting SS benefits. That's a great big WTF? to me. The explanation is always "well, we paid into it so we deserve it". BS. I pay into the food bank but I'm not demanding a bag of potatoes and daily bread.

The way I see it is the right promotes a socialist system that pays everyone regardless of social stature, while the left whines about working during elderly years like it's some innate right to retire and live off of others. Out of 10,000 years, there was a 40 year or so period when pensions provided this. That model is a company buster and has rightfully went away for the most part.

I say make it a true safety net for the needy and encourage everyone to take responsibility for themselves. Run out of money at 83 and there's a check waiting for you.
 
Franklin: I don't have any real objection to means testing social security at the individual level. I do have an objection to abolishing the system in its entirety.
 
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