Social Security Article by AnthonyT

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Social Security Article

POSTED BY: ANTHONYT
UPDATED: Thursday, September 22, 2011 03:35
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Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:08 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/20/opinion/granderson-social-security/index
.html

Hello,

Part of this article sounds like it was written by Frem. I never thought I'd see some of these sentiments on CNN. But I'm glad I have.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011 8:05 PM

FREMDFIRMA

But only part.

One thing that pisses me off about calling it an "entitlement" is how much of a ripoff it really is if you think about it.

What about all the people who died before they could collect - what did THEY get out of it, jack shit, that's what, years and years of pouring money down a hole at the point of government guns.

And those who DID collect, what for them, but hacking off some of the most useful, vital things they depended on - like how medicare cut off coverage for dental and optical, two things seniors generally have a need of, to me that's like the dealer coming back AFTER you paid for the car, and taking the wheels back, retroactively changing the deal, that's bullshit any way you slice it - gunpoint deal or not, it WAS a deal, and I am hard on broken contracts.

This kinda crosses up personal with me in a couple ways I won't get into, but the salient point of the matter for ME is that we *have* the goddamn money, we just keep pissin it away on war-war-war and welfare for the war machines, and for WHAT ?

On *that* note, THIS.
Notice how fast Libya has dropped off the mainstream media - that's not an accident.

Yes, I’m saying that it’s all lies
http://gagnauga.is/index.php?Fl=Greinar&ID=169
(It's very long, but worth reading if anyone ever cared.)

Anyhows, I am less concerned about stickin bandaids on this while we have the floodgates open elsewhere just pouring out our nations lifeblood (sometimes literally) for no purpose but to enrich bastards who profit off our misery.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Tuesday, September 20, 2011 8:26 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Why are you even posting this fact-free opinion piece, I wonder?

"Call me crazy ..." OK - I'm calling him crazy - for repeating ad nauseum, the same crap.

"I'm not yet 40, so theoretically I still have plenty of time to have my own plan in place." Well, let's say he had - how would that have fared? Ask anyone with a 401K invested in the stock market ... corporate bonds ... or real estate ...

"No, I don't expect to benefit from it ..." ... wait for it ... "... at least not at the level those who are currently collecting are benefiting." So he does? Or doesn't? He weasels. You know - strong statement which happens to not be true, then a backtrack.

"We are not as mad about this switcheroo as much as we are mad that the reform can keeps getting kicked down a road ..." Which reform is that, I wonder? Bush's attempt at privatization? Cutting off poor people to spare the rich?

"Anybody with a high school diploma and a calculator can see how entitlement programs are damaging the economy ..." like Social Security which is self-funded - in fact fully funded for decades and which only requires modest tweaking to continue indefinitely? Is he complaining about SS, or what ... exactly?

"During budget and debt ceiling talks, Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid responded as if the Republicans wanted to sell voters' first-born babies into slavery." Wait! This asshole complains that SS won't be around then tries to pin the blame for attempting to kill it on DEMOCRATS?

"Today the sheer number of the baby boomers is slowly strangling it to death." If only ... he were even modestly acquainted with facts.

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011 4:16 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

My main interest in this article is that he mentions a time when the government expressly murdered citizens, expresses doubt that the government will care enough to be there to help its citizens, and suggests that the government is untrustworthy.

Which are sentiments I see more often here than on CNN.

Your comments about his waffle argument are astute, Kiki. But as for Social Security surviving incidents which decimate all other investments? I'm not entirely convinced that the Social Security program is going to survive a continuing economic crisis.

There are people who would steal my future and tell me I don't deserve the gift of my own money, which I was forced to invest in a program that they now want to dismantle.

This makes me very upset.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011 9:37 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Funny...I saw that article, Anthony, and decided not to put it up because it WAS in my view an opinion piece of little substance. So obviously I haven't much good to say about it; I'll let Kiki speak for me.

Frem, I find that link you posted to be even worse, really awful. He rants on and on and ON about the media, but presents few or no facts to back up his claims that it's all lies. I think most of us already know Ghadafi had no "official" leadership...that in no way means he didn't have absolute power, yet just by saying Ghadafi wasn't a "President" or anything, he's intending it to mean Ghadafi wasn't a dictator. He certainly WAS, and the omission of a specific title changes none of that. The whole thing reads like REALLY RAMBLING, tin-hat conspiracy theory, and little else to me.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011 1:26 PM

DREAMTROVE

Anything that went in did so as an income tax, a regressive tax where the poor pay in 15%, the middle class 5%-10% and the rich pay <1%.

That money is then stolen to fund illegal wars to maintain secret networks of terror and corporate military empire.

What comes out, and goes to the elderly is chosen arbitrarily, and run as a ponzi scheme*. The payments change in a regressive way as well. If you are wealthy, then you put more in, and the allotment "ceiling" is raised every year, so those who were getting $2000 are now headed towards $3000. The "Cost of Living increase" has been suspended by Obama since he took office. That means if you used to get $400, you still get $400. Only you don't, because now they deduct $100 if you are also on Medicare.

* The one thing Rick Perry is right about (okay, he has a couple points, but not at all well rounded, definitely not enough to make him president. Maybe in some OMB position, but I digress.)

Of course, most of the people who get this screw deal are women. The housewives. Their yield is calculated by their husband's income, but not in a positive way. My dad gets quite a hefty check, my mom gets a tiny one.

As one of the guys at the RPUSA described it to me once:

Quote:
Paraphrasing, but it went something like this:

There's two ways people look at social security: As an investment scheme, or as welfare. As an investment scheme, it's the worst one I've ever seen: You're forced into it, and the average yield, should you survive to take it, is about 33 cents on the dollar of your own money back, and that's not adjusted for inflation, which, with the average dollar being in there for 20 years is pretty steep.

As a welfare program, it's also the worst one I've ever seen. If you're a millionaire, you do pretty well, if you're a former janitor, you get jack. If you're not 65 but homeless because you're a drug addict, you might get something, but if you're just out of work, you won't.

Add to that the totally regressive nature of the taxes that are used to pay for it, and what you have is a terrible system. No, it's worse than that, it's a very bungled robbery attempt.

A terrible system would be a solid upgrade over what we have, and I happen to have a terrible one right here that we could implement in place of what we have:

1) Means test recipients. Figure out how much they need to pay bills, eat, live. We already have social workers that can do this.

2) Write a check to everyone who needs money.

3) Get the money by printing it.

Now that's a terrible system, but let's put it to work:

High estimates are about 50 million people in need of some form of income assistance. Say $10,000 a year on average. that's $500 billion. That'd deflate the GDP about 3.5%.

Hey, I said it was a terrible solution, but it beats the one we got.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011 2:49 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Hmm, regarding government "protection" and "safety nets" one might remember how often I've been screwed, and hard, by them - from FSLIC allowing Old Court Savings and Loan to fuck me out of what was at the time my life savings, to the medical issues which landed me in a wheelchair most of the time, to government-mandated "insurance" which has never not once held up their end of the bargain...
I mean, at what point does one flat call it, these things are not to be trusted ?

As for the other, yeah, it's a long rant, would you rather have soundbite talking points ?
He's quite right about the complicity of the media, and the fact that in this case we're essentially replacing Castro with Batista, and pretending it's some kind of improvement - Ghadafi is a bastard, no doubt about it, but for fucks sake, what right have we to determine the government of another nation, especially when the times we have done so have not only caused carnage and misery (Pinochet, Papa Doc, Saddam, etc) but also caused blowback that has resulted in even more - and this WILL go the same way.
Just cause we'd rather not hear it, rather not face it, rather not be called on our own complicity as our tax dollars finance tragedy, doesn't mean it doesn't happen - what are we to do, pretend it doesn't, go into spirals of denial, then ?

And yes, these things are related, cause it's the safety nets and programs committed to aiding our own that are robbed to pay for these monstrous deeds - we're so willing to shovel our blood and treasure into things no good will ever come of, taxing people into poverty and then gutting the very programs meant to sustain them or lift them out of it till we're naught but slave labor to fund the war machine - and I for one have had enough of it.

Fact is, opinions MATTER - you can throw all the facts in the world at some folk and not budge them an inch *you know this*, it's obvious and lampshaded on a regular basis here, and thus I think it's time the voices of people NOT screaming for war withut end, NOT screaming for hate, intolerance and bloodshed, are heard.
And if those voices don't limit themselves to parrotting soundbite feelgood slogans, but address the actual issues, so much the better, cause there aren't any easy answers, and when folk work together on a thing, they are a power.

One I say we damn well better get to using, before the warmongers and their machine destroy us all.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Thursday, September 22, 2011 3:35 AM

DREAMTROVE

You make a good point that welfare systems give an excuse for a large central govt. to exist, and keep the people from rebelling against it, and thus is can continue its war machine unchecked, if that's the point you're trying to make.

My point on the other thread about subsidies is they ridiculously inflate the market prices of consumer goods and services pushing them out of reach of the un-aided consumer.

Healthcare, in the 50s vs. today; the housing market, before and after margin lending rules; The absurd increase in the price of education* with student loans; So too with cars, and so many other things.

* I went to college by working 2 part time minimum wage jobs. Of course, tuition was $675 a semester. The cost of *providing* a college education has gone way down now, because of the use of adjuncts, who now make up 80% of teaching staff, and make about 10% of what professors make. Teaching salaries for each status now are very similar to what they were then, and class sizes may have gotten worse, which means the educational payroll is at most 28% of what it used to be, meanwhile the baseline tuition cost at my alma mater is now 10 times what it was when I went there.

This sort of economic model necessitates credit, which ultimately indentures the consumer to future labor to pay for the consumption at unrealistic price.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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