Re: social security trustees' report released two months late

On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 18:16:41 -0400, Alan Lichtenstein <arl@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

Rumpelstiltskin wrote:

( previous post snipped-follow thread )

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.

The reactionaries have one valid point. Raising taxes never produced
anything.


Running up a $10 trillion debt is preferable?


Economic growth does that. In Europe, they have settled into
a status quo and accepted essentially a second class economic status.
They have relatively little productive industries and while their high
taxes do indeed provide services for their citizenry, which we don't
have, they do tend to create a burden which I believe, ultimately works
against their welfare. Obviously, they don't think so, for they
continue to levy the taxes. And obviously, the population doesn't
care, because they continue to get the services. Odd.


No, they don't think so. Australia runs something like Europe. My
Aussie roommate didn't have a steady job for three years (about age
19 to 21) after he left here and went back to Australia. I asked him
about health care, and he responded blithely that was not a problem
in Australia. I think the Australians, and the Europeans, like things
that way. I would I have liked things that way in America myself.



Now, that doesn't mean that we can't find some middle ground. We still
have the semblance of an economic plant, which we could still use if
we'd get off this nonsense of the free market economy, which is the
shortsighted mantra of the reactionaries. The one thing the U.S. has in
its favor is that it still has the market for the consumer goods that
are produced. We don't use that club to leverage our interests.

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.

A free society has to have access to Government. Unfortunately, access
tends to generate influence peddling.



I don't think anyone else has a lobby system anything near as bad
as the USA, where business rides roughshod over the interests of the
people. That is arguably entirely the fault of the American people,
though, because the population elsewhere feels more like it owns the
government rather than just being a helpless pawn tossed around by
hopelessly powerful and indifferent interests. There are laws to keep
government and business from colluding elsewhere as they do in the
USA, enacted by the watchfulness and demand of the people.



We need more stringent laws to
keep our politicians honest. After all, if the politicians weren't
buying, the lobbyists would have no audience.



And if the American people wouldn't stand for their politicians
being bought, against the interests of the people, the lobbyists
wouldn't be able to buy the politicians, or at least wouldn't be
able to buy each one more than once.



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 agree that we won't retire the debt with the Republicans in Office.
But that is very likely to change soon.


Unfortunately collapse may be unavoidable now no matter what's
done, and if the Democrats are in power when the house collapses,
they'll get blamed for the collapse.



( snip )

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.

Unfortunately, given my position, I am inclined, unfortunately, to agree
with Jeff about that characterization. Those I.O.U.'s will never be
paid. And that's the problem.



They'll be paid if I have anything to do with it. Of course, I
won't have anything to do with it. I'll be in a wheelchair, assuming
my wheelchair hasn't been sold for scrap by then to help pay for
golden parachutes for Exxon execs.




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.

Unfortunately, as much as I would like to blame Reactionary Ronnie, for
this one I can't. It's simply a case of demographics, which became
noticeable on his watch.


Ronnie is the one who started running up deficits and never paying
them off. That was the start, and it was an explosion rather than a
slow start, of the current fiscal irresponsibility.




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.

I don't consider it pouncing. It will strictly be a business decision.



Sure, a lion pouncing on an antelope is a business decision too.



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.

You're not going to be so lucky as to be able to pay your debts with
devalued money. The moneyed class will never permit it.


As mentioned before, one of my friends bought land and a house
in Kentucky in hopes of protecting against a collapse of the dollar.
Unfortunately, though the house is gorgeous in a lovely setting, he
just doesn't want to live in Kentucky. That's a problem. If I bought
a house in San Fran, it would just about break me, and I have no
confidence that the housing prices won't collapse. (Of course, I
said that when I moved here in 1969 too, and the cost of houses
has increased by at least a factor of 10 since then.) I don't want
to buy a house where I don't want to live, and I want to live in San
Fran.









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.




.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: social security trustees report released two months late
    ... spineless politicians do: Trying to satisfy everyone without ever ... And since the increase in taxes will NOT be ... instead going to retire debt, ... Government picks up those services which private individuals no longer ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: social security trustees report released two months late
    ... They were just doing what spineless politicians do: Trying to satisfy everyone without ever having to make any hard decisions. ... 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. ... 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 ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: social security trustees report released two months late
    ... 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. ... 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. ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: The U.S. Trade Deficit
    ... >>You have just said that there may be no limit to how much debt the US may ... >>> The government's intrinsically worthless fiat money is valuable to the ... However if U.S. taxes were no ... > foreign currency as its de facto money. ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Buckley finally sees the light
    ... use increased taxes solely to reduce the debt, and for no other purpose, ... whereas tax cuts are not. ... unpersuasive, because it's all money, and huge chunks of money.) ...
    (soc.retirement)
Loading