Re: social security trustees' report released two months late

On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 08:08:42 -0400, Alan Lichtenstein <arl@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

Rumpelstiltskin wrote:

( previous post snipped-follow thread )

And if we wait
until the *** does hit the fan, it will be even more difficult and
painful and debilitating. What should be done IMHO, is to rescind the
Bush tax cuts, which were ill-advised in the first place, and use the
money gradually to retire the debt, or at least, reduce it
substantially.



Yep, but I think it might be too late now to ever retire the
debt. Further, perhaps catastrophic, devaluation of the
dollar may be the only possible outcome. But if so, let's
distribute the pain around, rather than disproportionately
blaming SS.




Also, ending the unnecessary war would also help.


IMV, the pennies on the dollar remaining after the government's
years of theft and idiotic lack of foresight should be spread around
equally among social security and the other victims, the way things
are apportioned in bankruptcy cases. I'm not at all sympathetic
with any plan to just screw the people who already paid, but not
disturb the fat cats (who were in on a lot of the screwing) because
"that would damage 'the economy' ", whereas screwing retired
people and continuing to deliver steaks to the fat cats wouldn't,
it's contended by the same gang of crooks, "damage the economy"
as much.

There's not pennies on the dollar. Social Security is going into
deficit in 2018, but the IOU's can be used to pay the difference. If
the Treasury has to pay Social Security, the Government will either have
to replace what the Treasury pays as debt to The Trust Fund, or increase
revenue, with all that entails. the negative effects for the economy,
considering the amounts involved would not have a very positive effect,
which would trickle down to the working people, proving that Reagans's
voodoo economics did work. But only for sharing the pain, not the
profits. Sorry, Rumple, that's not a good alternative.




I don't see why people collecting SS should get all the pain while
the thieves who stole so much of the money in the first place should
be shielded as much as possible from the pain they created. Screw
"the economy" If "the economy" just means rich people staying rich,
then I don't have much use for it. People can buy Volkswagen
instead of Mercedes for a while, at least until everybody has a decent
standard of living, especially the people who paid insurance to that
end all their working lives.

I agree that the people collecting Social Security should not be the
ones to shoulder all the pain. In fact, I believe they should not
shoulder ANY pain. And I would hardly characterize the irresponsible
actions of politicians as 'stealing.' They were just doing what
spineless politicians do: Trying to satisfy everyone without ever
having to make any hard decisions. And the economy is not just rich
people staying rich; it's about keeping Joe Sixpack working at a job
that pays him a middle class salary. Joe Sixpack doesn't buy a
Mercedes, but he doesn't even buy his Ford if he's unemployed. If you
raise taxes so high, you're going to hurt not only businesses, but those
working stiffs as well. And since the increase in taxes will NOT be
going to provide services to people, such as building roads, etc.,
instead going to retire debt, the public will additionally suffer. The
Public can take small amounts of belt-tightening, but not large doses.




You touched on something above that's one of my bugbears: taxes
in the USA. They're not as high as taxes many other places, but in
Europe one has National Health and better social programs. In the
USA, I find it hard to see what the taxes are doing for the people.

I would like to see the lobbying establishment killed off in the
USA. That institution seems to me a source of a great deal of
needless waste, and anti-democratic corruption.

Eventually, we have to retire the public debt or devalue. I don't
know if the public debt can be retired at this point, it certainly
won't happen with the republicans in office, the way they've been
going starting with and including Reagan. On the other hand, it
seems to me that most of the rest of the world is living the same
fantasy that debt doesn't really hurt.




I've thought lately of trying to draw a picture of "the economy".
I don't really have any idea what it would look like, but neither does
anyone else, it seems. "The economy" certainly doesn't seem to
be thought of by the government anything like the people once
thought it was - responsibility, and security and fair dealing for the
majority of the population. It's obviously something very different
from that, nowadays. I thought of starting out my artist's conception
of "the economy" by using the dragon from the Welsh flag.

A number of people have put forth relatively reasonable ideas. But the
simple fact is that if you increase taxes to such a high amount which
would be needed to pay off the IOU's, EVERYONE, businesses and
individuals is going to suffer.



Cutting down SS means that people are going to suffer too. It's
not a question of "are" versus "are not", of course, it's a question
of "who" and "how". I'm tired of SS being attacked as if it's the
problem - it's not so much the problem as the victim, but there
seems little concern expressed for taking a pound of flesh from the
sources that victimized SS. Any such responsibility gets swallowed
up into the fog of musings about "the economy", which doesn't
seem to mean the welfare of people who paid into SS in good faith.

I'm not in favor of cutting Social Security. I'm just a realist and I
understand the dilemma that we now have with regard to solving the
problem, which will only get worse the longer we wait.


I don't think we should just slough off the "dusty old IOU's". I
agree that something needs to be done for the future, but not
nearly so much as is advertised by those who think of the money
already paid in to SS as "dusty old IOU's". I'm personally opposed
to raising the SS taxes, which leaves me with raising the retirement
age - not an attractive prospect to me, but not as bad as
alternatives.



I guess we could, for a while, keep collecting money from people
indefinitely with the promise it was going to help them out later,
then continue to renege when it came time for them to get the
benefits they'd been promised.

That's the Republican way.

Too bad for them, but it would
sustain "the economy" (in the new sense) a little longer until the
wheels of progress got to the point they had to go so fast that the
materials could no longer sustain the acceleration, and everything
flew apart at once because its safety margin had been cut so
thin it could no longer be of any help.

Alice in Wonderland. Run faster and faster, just to stay in the
same place.

That's the history of our politicians solutions to the problem. We will
have a similar one which will only defer the problem for another few years.



It's a fairly recent problem, starting with Reagan. We did, true,
run up big debt for WWII, but that was for a vital reason. Now
we're running up debt for no good reason.




Things may have gone too far now. People talk about how the
deficit is not much compared to the GNP, but, oddly enough the
roller coaster shows no ability even to slow down the
acceleration into heretofore unplumbed depths.. Hopefully, things
won't shatter into complete collapse until after I'm dead. Then,
après moi, la déluge.

Rumple, just wait until China gets tired of purchasing our debt.



Oh yeah, I've mentioned that myself, as have others. Sometimes
I look toward China and see a cat waiting at a mousehole for the
most promising moment to pounce.



That
day is coming very soon. We are a nation living on credit. Our life
styles are created NOT because we are a productive country, but because
we now have the largest consumer debt ever. When we can no longer
afford to pay the finance charges on the money our credit cards lend us,
you'll see a very rapid decline in our standard of living. You see the
handwriting on the wall now; the gap between rich and middle-class and
poor widening frighteningly fast.



I may have run my personal finances stupidly, in a sense, by NOT
getting into debt. If I eventually had to pay my debts, but with
devalued money, I'd in a sense have come out ahead. In another
sense, though, I wouldn't come out ahead because I wouldn't have
had peace of mind while I was living in debt. Maybe some people
can cope with being constantly in debt, but I can't even cope with
TV commercials, or with the telephone ringing more than twice a day.



Problem is, the only real 'saving' would take place if we continued to
run surpluses and thus, exchange the 'dusty old IOU's' for real dollars,
which could then have been invested to provide some real money growth.
But SCOTUS took that option off the table when they appointed Bush
president in 2000, and the voters further continued to insure that
option would never see the table when they elected Bush in 2004.

Unfortunately, I must concur with Jeff's sarcastic pessimism.



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